


And There'll Be Coins On My Eyes

by athousandordinarylemons



Category: Sally Face (Video Games)
Genre: Depression, Dialogue Heavy, Emetophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, In The Flesh AU, Multi, Only passing nods to canon, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Self-Harm, Suicidal Ideation, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2019-10-24 15:22:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17706770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandordinarylemons/pseuds/athousandordinarylemons
Summary: Nobody knows why it happened, but the dead have risen, bringing with them every last hurt and regret from the ends of their lives.In which Larry came back from the dead and has to deal with it.





	1. Charon

**Sorry mom. You got this. Strongest person ever. Don’t worry about me.**

_Larry? Lar-bear, it’s time for dinner, you can’t...stay...Larry?! Oh god, oh god oh god…_

\---

_You… you… Larry? C’mon man, you can’t…_

**Dark. Power cut? Doesn’t matter. So hungry…**

_Christ he can’t hear me. Soda, go hide. Just like mommy showed you._

**Know you. Doesn’t matter. Does it matter?**

**Smells. Sharp, acrid. Ammonia, like cleaning supplies. More voices. Underwater sounds. No water. Thirsty. Feels so dry.**

_Larry, wait-!_

\---

**Rain sounds. Wet wood. Moldy paper. Canvas.**

**Safe space. Quiet. Alone. Familiar. Good.**

**Safe.**

\---

“Alright Lar, we’re good.”

A deep breath and a soft groan interrupted the quiet after the announcement. Everything in him ached for just a moment then went back to numbness, and his eyes opened to roll up and half focus on the ceiling. The upper floor. Whatever. The top of the basement.

“Thanks mom,” he murmured then stood and stretched his arms over his head, then slumped back down again and turned when he heard the zipper case being closed and stashed in one of the living room tables. A brochure on top of it sported a cheerful-looking young woman with deep rings under her eyes and veins creeping up her neck, eyes a milky yellow-white that matched her scrub top. Why’d they have to put something so… that, on the pamphlets they gave everyone’s families? Like people would just be able to deal with that?

Larry blinked as he registered that his mother was talking to him, coming out of his thoughts to look down at her with his mouth half-open, making it obvious that he hadn’t actually heard what she’d said to him. She was looking up at him expectantly, though after a few seconds it became clear to her that he hadn’t answered because he didn’t know what he was answering.

“Larry, are you ready?” she asked with a tone he knew meant she was repeating herself. Lisa Johnson had always been very good at her Tones, conveying her thoughts so well, always so patient, especially with her son. It was one of those things he loved, and respected, about her most. Her hands were on her hips when he continued to fail at the whole replying thing. “Come on hun, aren’t you excited to go and see your friends again? You haven’t left the apartment since you got outta the treatment center a few days ago, surely you gotta be lonely down here, knowing they’re hangin’ around without ya.”

“Sure, mom,” Larry replied, though there was a moment of hesitation. Lonely...yeah. That was a word for it.

“Lar. Larry, look at me,” Lisa urged, reaching to grasp Larry’s wrist, looking up at him with a soft, encouraging smile. “Trust me, it’ll be _fine._ ”

A nod, but not a positive response otherwise. He didn’t share her optimism about the situation. After all, what kind of positive could come of walking outside after having popped out of the grave and wandered about your hometown fucking groaning for brains? (Yeah he knows they never actually did that, the speech centers of their brains were shut down, whatever, he doesn’t need to hear the argument again, even in his head.) There was no good that could come of this. Nobody needed to see their dead friend out on a stroll.

On that thought Larry turned to head back to his room rather than looking into his mother’s hopeful face. He could tell by her silence when he eased his door closed that she wasn’t as sure about this as she was trying to be in front of him. Maybe that scared him more than the rest of it, that her brave face really was just that, this time. A face. She was worried for him.

_But what mother wouldn’t be, after…_

Larry glanced around his room and grimaced at the boxes stacked neatly, covered by the sheets that had once been on his bed. The frame of which now stood off to one side, the mattress gone, and apparently replaced by the brand new set of box spring and pillowtop that still hadn’t been unwrapped yet. Yeah, that… he’d think about the implications of all of that a little later. He’d think about a lot of this later. He’d overthink it, even. He was good at that.

Heading to the little half-bath off his old bedroom, Larry picked up a small case from the top of one of the boxes and unlocked the clasps, flipping open then scowling at the contents: a makeup sponge and a little circular container of flat foundation mousse, and a case with dark brown iris contacts and solution. He looked up from this to the mirror that he distantly thought could use a pass over with some windex. There was still a trace of adhesive gunk from a sticky note. His lips twitched up as he remembered, after a second of thought, the note’s message:

_Nice face nerd, whered you get it, your mom?_

He looked from the ghost of sarcastic sticky notes past up to the glass itself, and his expression fell again, thick brows knitting over eyes he could only describe as pus-yellow in color, the peculiar shrinkage of his pupils making him look all the more nightmarish the longer he stared at himself. The dark circles were more pronounced under his eyes now that his skin was so pale, and his lips had darkened substantially between his time in the ground, then at the treatment center. Well, that, he could figure out how to work around. Same deal with his nails. Surely he still had a bottle of Sally’s preferred matte black around here somewhere…

When Larry passed back through the living room to head out, Lisa stopped him, tsking at him and reaching to un-smudge where he’d applied a little bit of eyeliner to make the area around his eyes less “walking damned” and more “need ten years of sleep”. She patted his cheek when she deemed him satisfactory then ran her hands down the sleeves of his hoodie, looking up at him with a tight little smile that made him think she might burst into tears at any moment. He cut that off with a quick kiss to her cheek and a brief “later, mom” and moved around her to get to the door. He wasn’t ready for this. Better now than never, though. Get it over with. Like pulling off a bandaid.

Walking through the building after riding the elevator up was eerie. It was so much quieter now. Half the apartments were empty. He wanted to think everyone just moved out after the war, but he knew as well as everyone else that was only partly true. He knew where the rest were. A couple of the doors were boarded up. One of the windows in the lobby had been uncovered, but the rest had plywood still nailed over the outer frames. It made the atmosphere a lot more dreary, half bathed in shadow with dust motes drifting through the single bright shaft of sunlight.

The town felt the same, devoid of life even in the sunshine. Larry moved slowly as he walked with his head down, hands in his pockets. He wanted a cigarette, but he reminded himself that he wouldn’t have nicotine cravings anymore. His body couldn’t produce those particular chemical signals. It was just habitual, then, something to do with his fingers and something to worry between his teeth when he started getting anxious. A fidget. Maybe he should look into getting one of those chewable necklaces. Knowing his luck he’d probably chew the thing to pieces like the shitty pencil erasers he’d destroyed all through middle school.

His eyes skimmed over the sign outside Phelps Ministry, lip curling.

**THOSE RETURNED DEAD ARE WITHOUT GRACE.**

Yeah, whatever you say, jackass.

Larry gave the end of the church’s drive a wide berth and headed down the hill into town proper, looking over the businesses that were shuttered, some boarded up, others just destroyed. Abandoned lots that looked worse than he remembered. It makes something deep in him ache, seeing Nockfell looking like the aftermath of a natural disaster. It didn’t quite feel like home anymore.

He was looking up at the pizza place he hadn’t been to in what felt like years, lamenting the lack of greasy pizza and overstuffed calzones to himself when footsteps brought him out of his reverie, and he whipped his head around with his hands buried in the pocket of his hoodie to see who else was actually out here in this veritable wasteland. He’d recognize those bright green eyes anywhere.

“Ash?”

She’d gotten a haircut. It looked good.

 

“Oh my god.” She took a step back, lips parted, eyes glossy. “ _Oh my god._ ”

“Hey, Ash-”

“Holy shit.”

Larry didn’t have the chance to speak up any further as Ashley turned and started to run, leaving him with his mouth open and a bewildered look on his face. That was… well. About what he’d expected, truth told. He watched her as she rounded a corner half a block away, then stopped and peeked back around at him. He wasn’t sure what to think of it when he realized she was sort of hopping in place before bolting once more.

That was enough socializing for today.

\---

He nearly missed the almost tentative-sounding knock at the door when it came, helping to put away the groceries as he was. He peered around the cabinet door as his mother called out that she’d be right there, quietly hoping that it wasn’t another emergency repair. There had been a lot of those in the months after the rising, as the news outlets had been calling it, and she was run so ragged that every day without an emergency was a good one by her reckoning. Larry had offered to go in her stead once or twice, but she’d insisted she could handle it. He got the feeling she just didn’t want him risking himself unnecessarily.

When she opened the door, Larry was hit by a wave of terror as he spotted the top of the head he both wanted to see, and dreaded seeing, the most since he’d come home. He swallowed down nonexistent saliva and very quietly shut the cabinet door without bothering to put in the can of peas in his hand, instead ducking and trying to make his way around the apartment, out of the line of sight from the doorway. He cringed when he heard his name just as he was passing in front of the TV, holding up his can as if it would shield him. At the same time he looked toward the door, gnawing at his lip, staring into wide blue eyes that only seemed to be getting bigger behind the eyeholes of the prosthetic mask.

“Larry face?”


	2. Small Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Best dead friend forever?

Sharp fists barely registered as they collided with his chest. Larry felt like it should hurt, probably a lot, but at most he could feel the thumps but none of the pain. Part of him wished it did hurt. At least it would feel more fair.

Sal shouted miserably and slapped his hands down on Larry’s chest, glaring up at him as tears welled up but didn’t quite fall. Every few words he struck Larry again, as if punctuating his thoughts with his fists.

“You’re back and you never thought to tell me? I had to hear it from _Ash_ because she saw you in the road?! Do you even fucking realize how _fucked_ this is?!? There’s no excuse for this, you fucking _left me_ and I fucking _found you_ and and and you fucking-” He sucked in a breath and beat his fists down into Larry’s chest again, a furious sob ripping from his throat.

“You ASSHOLE, I can’t fucking BELIEVE you! How the FUCK- DO YOU EVEN-”

Larry’s arms wrapped around his much smaller friend.

“LARRY. LARRY STOP-!”

The struggling stopped after several seconds, and then Sal nearly collapsed forward, his face pressing into Larry’s shoulder and openly weeping as the older man buried his nose in the part of Sal’s long, loose hair. He breathed in the shampoo scent and tightened his grip when Sal started to quiet down. He turned an eye to his mother, who looked as if she might start to cry, herself, then just pushed his face deeper into Sal’s hair.

It took several minutes of standing there trying to regain control before Sal could bring himself to move away, and finally look Larry in the face again, eyes narrowed and still pouring tears. They dripped from the bottom of the prosthetic, and Larry had a vague notion that if he were a more poetic sort of guy he might have said something beautiful about it. Instead he just drank in the sight, imagining the angry quivering of Sal’s lip. He realized after a moment that he was still holding onto a can, and he held it out to Lisa to put away.

“Fucking hate you,” Sal grumbled, sniffling haggardly then noticeably recoiling as he pulled back, reaching up for the lower clasp of his prosthetic and lifting it up enough to run the sleeve of his sweater underneath. Larry just carded his fingers back through Sal’s hair, holding it back then gathering it in one hand and drawing it over Sal’s shoulder.

His words stuck in his throat, Larry nodded his head back toward his bedroom door, acutely aware of his mother still watching them as she put away the last of the groceries. This was definitely a talk to have alone.

The door was locked behind them when they went to the room, and now Larry was digging in the boxes of his belongings. Sal explained quietly that Lisa had packed everything away after Larry had died, but hadn’t known where to put it all and hadn’t really been willing to throw any of it out. Larry nodded; that sounded like his mom.

After plopping the beanbag down onto the floor and letting Sal claim it, Larry went to grab the makeup kit from the bathroom then sat down with the wipes to remove the little bit of work he’d done, scowling at the fakey tan on the towelette.

“Hey, so…” Sal started after a few seconds’ silence, stealing one of the wipes for himself and pulling open the upper latch of the mask then setting it atop his knees, wiping the inside of it out to be rid of the snot. He still looked rough, puffy-eyed and a little bit irritable. “Now that uh. Now that you’re back, is there anything you wanna do?”

“What?”

 

“I mean, since you’re home and all. I live with Todd and Neil still and we’re working on patenting some stuff, but you were looking at school before, right?”

Larry leaned into the side of the beanbag as he dug a wadded corner of his wipe into the crease of his nose to get the trapped mousse, making a face and scoffing bitterly.

“Sal, what college is gonna accept someone like me? A lot of us were stripped with citizenship, according to all the paperwork.”

“Wait, they can do that?”

“Apparently they can do whatever they want with our records,” Larry huffed. “Found that out the hard way when I tried to go get my ID renewed.”

“Dude, that’s fucked up.” Sal wrinkled what was left of his nose and took the wipe from Larry, folding part of it over his finger and using it to get the stray blots of makeup the other had missed. He held Larry’s head up with his fingers beneath his scruffy jaw, tongue poking from the undamaged corner of his mouth. “But there’s not a lot of this that _isn’t_ fucked up, I guess.”

“Don’t I fuckin’ know it, man.” Larry sighed and finally fell back away from letting himself be fussed, slouching onto the side of the beanbag and tucking his arms up under his head. He looked up at Sal putting his mask up on the top of his head, cheek mushed against his shoulder. “You know what’s super fucked? I can’t eat anything anymore. Or drink anything, or like… Dude. I don’t have a pulse. I don’t actually _need_ to breathe.”

Sall interrupted that thought, making his expression as fake-concerned as possible, “Can’t get it up anymore.”

Larry put on a similar, morally outraged face, as if he’d only just realized this himself. “ _Dude_. I can’t. You’re right. My entire afterlife has just been summarily _ruined_.”

“I wonder if they have pills for that.”

“I can’t even take pills!”

“Ouch.”

Larry lifted himself onto his elbows, arms crossed and propping himself up and looking at Sal thoughtfully.

“Hey.”

“Yeah, Larry-face?”

A soft smirk pulled at the corner of Larry’s darkened lips. “You look good.”

Sal’s smile widened as he laughed at that, pulling a little at the hair spilling over his shoulder. “Bullshit,” he replied easily.

“I mean it! The longer hair looks great. And, I mean, it does help that I missed your face.”

“Oh shut up.”

“Uh-oh, I’m gonna kiss your face.”

“Larry, no-”

“Too late, it’s happening~”

“Larry I swear to god,” Sal laughed as he was grabbed around the waist, and Larry pressed chilly lips against the smoother half of Sal’s face. He chuckled as Sal’s palm pushed against his nose, making him sit back down on the floor again. “Why would you go and get a guy’s hopes up like that anyway? Mean, Larry-face. Very mean, and also rude.”

“I bet if anyone could make my boner come back it’d be you.” Larry waggled his eyebrows at that, cueing Sal to start laughing again. His forehead met Larry’s in a gentle headbutt.

“Missed you, Larry-face.”

“Missed you too, Sally-face.”

Larry readjusted to rest his back against the beanbag, and sighed deeply at the wadded up makeup wipe still held in is palm. “I hate this. If I ever wanna go outside I gotta put on this shit and pretend like it doesn’t look really fucking stupid.”

“What if you didn’t? You shouldn’t feel obligated to cover up anything. It’d be one thing if it was your own personal choice to wear it but government-mandated cosmetics aren’t going to do anything but create more stigma against people like you. Besides, that’s a shitty imitation of your tan. You should own this Iron Maiden Album Cover look you’ve got now.”

Larry blinked, then grinned crookedly. “That’s kinda metal.”

“Wrong. It’s _seriously_ metal.”

A quiet knock on the door interrupted their continued chatter, Larry up and standing at the bathroom mirror, re-applying the eyeliner he’d used and trying to blend it with his fingers like he would charcoal on paper so that the darkness around his eyes looked a little more even. He looked back as Lisa peeked her head in and Sal started to buckle his mask back on, at least until his mother announced that it was time for supper. She pointed out that they’d been in here for the last two hours without coming out for anything.

Then she stopped. Her hands flew up to her mouth.

Luckily Larry was quick to break the awkward pause, mentioning that Sally needed double portions anyway because look at him, he was still such a small dude, he’d blow away in a stiff breeze, why don’t you go ahead and let mom feed you and I’ll get some stuff done in here, no problem! That would be his task for the evening. Lisa agreed, looking a little pensive but ultimately going along with it. Sal realized what had happened, and nodded as he followed Lisa back out into the living room.

Larry could smell food out there. Hamburgers, he was pretty sure. It made him all the more acutely aware of what he was missing, even more than Lisa instinctively trying to get him to come out for dinner.

Listening to the muffled conversation outside, Larry began to potter about the room, taking his sheets off the remaining boxes and tossing them onto his bed, then moving slowly to grab a spare blanket from the top of his closet and shake it out. He hadn’t actually made his bed in years before now. It was kind of funny, he thought as he folded his covers down, smoothing them out neatly. He’d only ever seen his bed look this neat on days that his mom actively got after him to tidy up.

Then he threw himself facedown on the blankets and undid his work, and just listened to the voices outside. He couldn’t make out the words, but the tone of the conversation seemed somber. It just made him think of everything that had gone wrong.

Sal crept in after a little while longer, after helping Lisa clean up after supper, closing the door behind him quietly and looking at Larry as he laid on his bed. He’d turned to face the wall in the time he’d been lying there, and when Sal approached, he almost seemed to be sleeping. The brochures hadn’t said much about how a reanimated person’s sleep cycle would reassert itself, but then again, this didn’t seem like Larry had just laid down to take a nap.

Sal’s suspicions were confirmed when he sat down near Larry’s legs, taking up the space behind his bent knees and watching him for a moment, then laying a hand atop Larry’s hip. He slowly lays himself down over the top of Larry’s legs and watches as his best friend stares off at the spackling of the wall, looking for all the world as if he were crying, though nothing was coming out. He only moves to pull himself further onto Larry’s bed and insert himself into Larry’s space, pulling one heavy arm over the top of himself and leaving his legs lying over Larry’s much longer ones.

Larry’s arm tightened around Sal’s middle and drew him in close with a shivering sigh. 

Everything hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very mood-swingy chapter with weird pacing, in that Everything Happens So Much kind of way.
> 
> Still looking for a beta-reader, if anybody might be interested.


	3. Sarah Minor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate title: Movement
> 
> In which the boys attempt to have a relationship again.

“Alright so...do you want me to count down or something?”

Sal knelt just behind Larry’s beanbag, a booklet in one hand and a syringe gun in the other, eyeing the former then adjusting his grip on the latter.

“Dude, don’t overthink it so much,” Larry sighed and bowed his head forward. His hair was pulled up off his neck and twisted into a haphazard bun, exposing the sunken black pit between the third and fourth vertebrae. “Just put the end of the thing there and kinda...I dunno, just hold my shoulder or something so I don’t jerk.”

Well, that just wasn’t comforting. Not in the slightest. Sal really kind of hated this. He’d offered to help though, and Lisa wasn’t around just now to take his place. He could do this, he just needed some time. Except, according to the info in the pamphlets, they were kind of on a time crunch. If Larry missed his shot, he could go back to being...not Larry anymore. The idea was terrifying.

“Ok, ok I’ve got this. Hold still.”

Watching the liquid draining from the phial was a little cool, Sal had to admit, but when Larry stiffened and started to shake, Sal’s attention snapped away and his arm wrapped around the other man’s shoulders, holding onto him tight. He listened to the low groan and straining of Larry’s jaw, imagining for a moment he could hear his teeth creak.

\---

_Lawwy face!_

_Stay back, Larry’s...Larry-face is sick, Soda. Go find mommy._

**Soda.**

_Feew better Lawwy face!_

**Small. So small. Tiny helpless weak no no NO NO _NO_**

Scenting the air. Sweet. Sharp smells. Ammonia, fear.

_Christ. Larry, don’t make me-_

**NO.**

_Go hide, just like mommy showed you._

**Dark, thirsty. No more.**

_Larry, wait-!_

\---

**Familiar. Safe.**

**Soft.**

**Home.**

_Love you, Larry-face._

\---

“Larry!”

A harsh, choking breath signalled Larry’s return to the present, his head thrown back as he shook, then slowly relaxed, dimly registering Sal clinging to him. His head tipped against Sal’s shoulder and he nudged his head against the edge of the other’s mask. “There, see? ‘s all good,” he said hoarsely. Sal didn’t look convinced.

Getting comfortable again took a second, but after some shoving and whining and bluster, Sal took Larry’s place in the beanbag, and Larry’s head ended up in Sal’s lap with Sal idly smoothing his fingers across Larry’s forehead. He reclined and watched Larry’s face, slowly blinking down at him as he stared up at the ceiling. He combed his fingers back through the loose fringe of Larry’s hair and mentally reasoned that even if Larry couldn’t technically feel it, that the action was still soothing by intent. He’d hold onto that idea for now.

“So…”

There was a moment’s silence as Larry’s eyes turned back up to focus on Sal, or at least on the underside of his chin.

“Do you wanna talk about this?”

“Eh...not much to talk about,” Larry replied, his words coming slowly. When Sal looked down at him with a squint to his eyes that said he clearly wasn’t buying that, Larry amended. “I don’t really remember much. Besides, it’s been like three years. Not even important in the grand scheme.”

Sal shook his head but let it drop. It wasn’t an argument he wanted to start or deal with. “If you say so, Lar…”

But it wasn’t lost on him that this kind of thing was part of why it had gotten so bad before. Larry not talking about the things that were happening in his head had led to him getting so knotted up, so guilty and angry and sad and tired, that his only recourse had been _that_. Sal was afraid for Larry even now that he’d seemingly been handed some kind of “get out of death free” card. He wished, just once, that Larry would be really ok with telling him everything. When they were kids and Larry had told him about the belief that he’d been cursed, he’d said it so solemnly that there was nothing to be done but try and help him with it. As their relationship had deepened, Larry had tried to open up a little more, telling him at least those little surface worries. He’d kept so much more to himself though, trying so hard not to worry Sal. Even with his last words, he urged Sal not to worry about him.

Sal wanted to demand that he actually talk to him, that Larry spill every deep hurt he’s ever felt, to convince him to cry and cry until he had nothing left, but he realized just then that Larry already had. He’d gotten to the end of all his heartache. All the pain finally numbed with a bottle of sweet whiskey and antifreeze.

Before Sal could actually start losing his own somewhat tentative cool, Larry interrupted him by sitting up and stretching, reaching to tug the scrunchie out of his hair then ruffling it all back out. Sal dragged his fingers through long brown locks until it laid smooth down Larry’s back. He leaned forward with his arms around Larry’s shoulders after, poking his cheek with a finger.

“So here’s a question. I know the pamphlets and stuff said all your nerve endings are dead now but does that also mean you wouldn’t be into kissing or anything on a connection level?”

Larry blinked, taking a moment to parse that before turning to look back at Sal.

“Wait, you actually do still wanna?”

“Well, unless your mouth suddenly tastes permanently like dirt and formaldehyde, yeah, I’m pretty sure I do.”

Larry was pretty sure he could hear the smirk on Sal’s face, and he didn’t know how he was supposed to respond to this. His hand was a touch unsteady as he reached up behind Sal’s head to gently open the buckles holding the prosthetic in place, then propped it up on top of the other’s head and looked him in the face, His hand cradled the misshapen half of Sal’s jaw, thumb dragging over the smooth ripple of scar tissue that took up so much of that half of his face. His nose nudged up against Sal’s, cool skin against warm. He gave Sal time to pull back at a second thought, but leaned in when the smaller man held steadfast.

His lips felt like Larry remembered, but in a distant sort of way. He had memorized that transition from plush to flat and taut skin years ago but now it felt like kissing him through plastic wrap. His instinct was to push harder, to cant his head and fit their lips closer together, breathing Sal in and opening the kiss, taking the other’s grunt as approval as he went for it with as much energy as he thought he could. He could feel the beginning of drool forming on Sal’s lips, a side effect of the mild deformation of his mouth that they’d long since learned to work around.

He froze when he tasted blood.

_Fuck._

Larry’s panic was evident on his face when Sal pulled back with his hand pressed against his lower lip, brow furrowed. He grabbed for a tissue box perched on the dresser that was currently holding his odds and ends, handing a couple to Sal while apologizing quietly and profusely, even as Sal shook his head and tried to reassure him that it was fine. It would just have to be one of those things they practiced again.

Larry wasn’t having it, though. He just recoiled, then pushed himself up off the floor to start to pace, slowly moving back and forth across the room while Sal watched him from the beanbag. He was talking to himself, running his hands through his hair, over his neck, across his arms as if trying to ground himself. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and crouched down, muttering that he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t, he couldn’t do anything right anymore, be it kissing or coping or, apparently, dying.

Sal cut that off before Larry could fuck himself up further, crawling over in front of Larry then sitting up on his knees and taking Larry’s hands, taking them away from his face and holding onto them with his thumbs pressing into Larry’s palms. There was still a smudge of blood on his chin, ignored for now.

“Lar. Look at me,” Sal urged, ducking his head a little lower to try and get Larry to meet his eyes again. “Larry, it’s ok. You’re _ok_. I get it.”

When Larry finally looked back up, his brow was knitted tight over big, pale eyes, puckered pupils still weirdly fascinating to Sal as he stared back, determined not to look away. Determined to give Larry the same treatment he’d received when he’d finally seen Sal’s face the first time.

“I want to be able to talk to you, Larry. Please.”

Larry’s throat worked as he slipped his hands out of Sal’s, resting them atop Sal’s knees instead. He picked at a loose thread in the ripped fabric of those favored red skinny jeans. His gaze fell again.

“Larry, I...look. Everything sucks right now. It’s sucked for the last few years, too. When…” Sal steeled himself, starting to fidget some with his hands resting between the two of them. “When the dead rose, nobody was actually prepared to deal with it. And dad...he tried… Dad went to try and help fortify the apartments. And he got attacked. And ever since, I’ve been alone. I mean, I live with Todd and Neil, but they have eachother, and a lot more stuff to worry about besides. I don’t want to bother them with my hangups, either. But it’s...hard. You probably know that better than anyone. Better than anyone I’ve ever known, at least.” Larry moved finally, pressing a soft, tentative kiss to Sal’s forehead, but it didn’t stop him from continuing, “I keep thinking I’m going to go insane here, Lar. Between the anxiety, the panic attacks, the fucking nightmares that haven’t gone away, I just...I want to be able to help you. I want you to not have to feel like I do.”

When Larry’s arms wrapped back around Sal again, he fell in and settled there, tucked in against the larger body with his hands twisted together in his lap.

“It’s not something you can help, Sal,” he finally murmurs, his cheek resting against Sal’s head. “You can’t fix an entire lifetime of brain fuck. Mom tried but there’s only so much action and positivity can do sometimes. It’s chemicals. I can’t help it any more than you can.

“That wasn’t the first time I ever wanted to die. It was just the only time I was bad enough to follow through.”

Sal curled up more tightly against Larry’s middle, taking his hand and clasping it between his own, bringing it to his lips and pressing them to cold knuckles. His heart hurt, like it was imploding slowly with the vacuum created by the hole of the grief that never quite went away between his mother, Larry, and then his father.

“From now on, I want you to be able to talk to me about the important stuff. Ok?”

Silence, then Larry spoke again, barely above a whisper. “I’ll try. For you, I’ll try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kept flipping between Sarah Minor (Keaton Henson), Movement (Hozier), and Without Me (Halsey) while working on this, so you have an idea of where my brainspace was this chapter.


	4. 10am Gare du Nord

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And please do not hurt me, love,_  
>  I am a fragile one, and you are the white in my eyes  
> Please do not break my heart,  
> I think it's had enough pain to last the rest of my life 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, I went a little meatier with this chapter than initially intended. Please enjoy an emotional rollercoaster.

“SO SAYS LEVITICUS, HE SHALL NOT GO IN TO DEAD BODIES OR MAKE HIMSELF UNCLEAN.”

Sal rolled his eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ…”

“UNDEAD FAGGOTS HAVE NO PLACE IN THIS WORLD. YOU WILL BOTH BE TOSSED INTO THE FIRE.”

Larry scoffed. “Sounds toasty, my man.”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP.”

“That’s more like it.”

Travis ranting at the pair of them really wasn’t anything they were particularly bothered over. He was still easy to brush off, and apparently still easy to rile. It would have been funny, if it weren’t so fucking sad. Sal mentioned in an undertone that the patriarch of Phelps Ministry had been killed in the first wave, and given Travis more fuel for his anger. He’d never managed to get it worked out, unfortunately. The anger and internalized homophobia would undoubtedly give him ulcers, if it hadn’t already. Sal wished he’d spent a little more time talking to Travis; there’d been a good guy in there, once. Maybe he was still there, buried under the psychological damage wrought by his parents and his fire-and-brimstone upbringing.

The screaming continued behind them a little bit longer as Travis, now the minister of the church after it was rebuilt enough to house the last remaining churchgoers, stalked back down the drive and back into his home base.

“I feel bad for him,” Sal murmured, looking back over his shoulder at the retreating man. Larry just shook his head.

“That big heart is wasted on an assbite like him, man. Trust me. He’s not gonna change.” 

Sal shoved a little on Larry’s shoulder for that, glancing at the church again then just shaking his head and pulling some on the sleeve of Larry’s sweater to get his hand out of his pocket. He allowed it and curled his ring and pinky finger in between Sal’s, swinging their hands gently between them.

Today was going to be the first time Larry had seen any of the friend group since Ash had spotted him, and Larry was, in a word, terrified.

“You’re overthinking things again,” Sal pointed out as they walked in silence, catching on to Larry’s tension. Larry wrinkled his nose but didn’t argue with the assessment.

Back in treatment, the doctors had had those cognizant in the population attending group therapy sessions every few days, an exercise meant to acclimate them to communicating again, and to let them know their patients weren’t going to panic when we went home. That was how his own division’s primary doctors had put it, at least. They would have the dead talk about little, mundane things with their peers, trying to make common connections and ease the anxiety of reintegration. Go around the circle, talk about someone you miss, what you were looking forward to, stuff like that. Talk about the people you love, your friends and family, spouses or children.

Larry never really knew what to say. He wanted to be able to look forward to getting out and seeing his friends and his mother again, but when he really thought about it, he was scared to death. What would they think of him when he stood before them, the evidence of what he’d done to himself written in every inch of his body? How could he ask them to accept him as he was now when he would just be a reminder of everything that had gone wrong, both before and after the war? And now, walking with Sal with their fingers linked, he could feel that dreadful pit in his stomach forming and growing heavier with every step. Sal had accepted him back without hesitation, but Sal was the nicest, most genuine and accepting human being in the world. A beautiful boy with a beautiful heart bent on sharing his gentle positivity and god, Larry did love him, but Sal’s outlook surely wouldn’t extend to Todd or Ash, or any of their friends.

He was on the verge of turning around and beating a path back to the apartments when his thoughts were interrupted by a hand being waved a few feet from his face, and big green eyes were pointed straight up on his, and Ashley’s expression shifted between curious and delighted when he finally actually paid attention to her.

“Those contacts look great,” she pointed out with a sweet smile, and Larry’s mouth opened, then closed again, lips pursing when her arms wrapped around him. Out of everything he was expecting, this...wasn’t exactly it. It must have been clear on his face when Ash pulled back, because she immediately papped his cheeks with both hands, showing no hesitation over touching him. He was stuck processing it for a moment, before the corner of his mouth quirked up in a small smile, softening the worry-lines on his face just a little.

“Digging the haircut,” he replied when she backed up again, starting to head off toward their destination. He didn’t want to be the one to say it, but meeting everyone at the last standing diner in this part of town seemed a little bit...tasteless. Still, it would be good to see everyone again.

Larry could already see the trio standing outside the diner with its flickering neon and weirdly fresh paint job. He fancied that just for a moment he could feel his heart thud heavily in his chest when all of them turned to look at him at once, dark eyes turned up on him showing clear hesitance.

A chorus of near silent groans accompanied Chug speaking up first:

“Wow dude, you actually don’t look like nightmare-fuel.”

“Gee thanks,” Larry snorted, though it was clear he was uncomfortable looking straight at Chug. He kept his head down, more uncomfortable than he wanted to show outwardly at a comment like that. He turned his attention to Neil and Todd as they exchanged looks, but then Todd’s hand was out and he blinked down at is as if wondering what to do with it, before remembering himself and taking it in a firm grip. That seemed to satisfy Todd as he shook it then let it go, and the redhead finally cracked a gentle sort of smile as he looked up at Larry.

They trooped inside amid quiet chatter, talking about what else had happened between when the war ended and the dead were returned to their families, Todd seemingly rather optimistic about everything, in his lowkey, factual way. It made Larry feel a lot better about coming to meet all of them, able to shuffle aside his misgivings about the visit. Of course, there was still the elephant in the room as the six of them settled into one of the booths of the sparsely-populated diner. It was eventually addressed when one of the two waitresses on staff came to ask if anyone wanted anything to drink.

“So...is anyone else gonna mention that it’s kinda weird to have a zombie in the diner?”

“Neil!”

“I think he’s got a point,” Sal said quietly, looking at Larry as his expression drew in, dark lips pressed together tight. He immediately hated the direction this visit was taking.

He was stupid to have been optimistic about it.

As the waitress waited, looking just as uncomfortable as Chug and Todd did at that moment (while Ash got into a quiet argument with Neil on the fact that that had been inappropriate), Larry just looked the girl in the face and ordered a cup of black coffee and a coupe of sugar packets to go with it.

“That’s not a good idea,” Todd pointed out, though he promptly bit his lip when Larry glared at him. He knew this wasn’t good, but he was going to prove a goddamn _point_. Sal gave him a curious look, trying to figure out what he was up to, though he got a sneaking suspicion that the only motivation for this move was spite. The girl wrote down the order without hesitation and took the others’ drink orders before nearly running away from the table.

Neil spoke up again, looking at Larry with his hands palm-up on the table, as if trying to beseech him to listen. The first words out of his mouth were cut off when Larry growled, “eat my chode, I can have a coffee if I want.”

“Larry-”

“Bite. Me.”

Larry’s arms were crossed over his chest and a full pout on his lips when the waitress returned, putting down a mug in front of him and filling it with steaming coffee, leaving a couple of packets beside it then handing out the rest of the various tea, coffee, and soda orders. Larry wasn’t looking anyone in the eye as he started to stir the sugar in with one of the spoons left on their table when they’d come in. His hands were clasped around the mug as if trying to warm them, and he looked back at Sal, at the same time hurt by and challenging the worried look the other was giving him.

As if trying to diffuse the tension, Todd cleared his throat and started to stir sugar into his own coffee. “How are you feeling, Larry? You’ve been out of treatment for a few days now and we haven’t heard anything from Lisa or Sal.”

“Feels like getting out of the hospital but still feeling really weird,” Larry sighed, picking a little at a chip in the handle of the coffee mug. “Like you’re an alien trying to pretend you’re human. Like MIB or something.”

Todd nodded. “Yeah, that’s a reasonable reaction. Trying to reintegrate into your life after a long stay in any kind of institutional environment takes time.” He turned a reassuring sort of look on him, and something in Larry squirmed. He knew Todd was just trying to help, but it still felt weird. Creepy, like the guy was trying to pussy-foot around him but pretending that he wasn’t.

Larry took a sip of his coffee amid several curious looks, and sighed softly. He could taste it, like tasting something via its smell, and the warmth creeping into his chest was comforting. He smiled a little against the rim of the mug.

“When I went to the hospital for the first time it kinda felt like this. I got my appendix out and had to stay for a while and then all anyone wanted to talk about was that. A kid gets surgery and has to be away from school for a while and it’s the most exciting thing that ever happened in Nockfell.” A few scattered agreements went around the table; their town was little, and quiet, aside from the hauntings that seemed centered around the apartments. It reminded Larry that in spite of everything, life still went on.

Conversation felt a little more natural after they found that bit of common ground, Ashley bringing up that her dad had been in the hospital for a while when she was in middle school, and that he’d complained about everything from the treatment to the bed to the nurses, then when he’d gotten home had complained about the medication and having to figure out how to take it on his own. There really was no winning, there. Larry raised his mug to that.

When the others were ready to actually order something for lunch Larry ordered a refill on his coffee, already feeling better in spite of the persistent feeling of awkwardness.

His stomach started to churn when the burger was set down in front of Chug, who had been fairly content just listening to all of them; he’d been watching Larry, eyes moving from his face to his hands to his coffee, making Larry feel very much like a bug under a bell jar. Larry stood as casually as he could manage and excused himself to the restroom, making it about three steps before having to sprint the rest of the way, hand clamped over his mouth.

When Sal went after him a minute later, he froze at the sound of retching and looked back at the others. Ashley and Todd exchanged worried glances, and Chug’s fingers were pressed so tight into the bun of his lunch that the burger was dripping into his fries. Neil grimaced and shook his head and Sal marched away from the table. He was acutely aware of the silence from the rest of the diner.

He peeked his head into the men’s room after giving the door a tentative knock, making a face at a peculiar, bitter smell. Larry was clutching one of the two urinals, sunk down onto his knees with his head resting against the porcelain. From the chrome fixture to the drain hole, streaks of black dribbled down, matching that on Larry’s chin.

“Lar?” He stood back when Larry picked his head back up, letting up another heave of tarry _stuff_ that Sal wasn’t even sure qualified as vomit. He gathered up the hair sticking to the sides of Larry’s face with a wrinkled nose at the black sticking those trailing locks at the side of the man’s hair to the corners of his mouth. “It’s alright, get it back out,” he sighed, rubbing his hand down the middle of Larry’s back.

Larry was silent aside from a last heave that only brought up a last trickle, then a rough snort and a hock to bring the rest up from his throat and sinuses. He spat, then put his forehead back down against the urinal. It took him a moment to notice that Sal had moved and retrieved a paper towel, holding it out for him to wipe his mouth. Then he realized that the same waitress that had served him his coffee was staring at him with huge eyes. She looked afraid to move past the door frame, even as she spoke up.

“I’m gonna h-have to ask you to l-l-leave,” she forced out, the pink high in her cheeks. “Health code, you know. No dead in food service establishments.”

Larry crumpled, wiping his mouth as Sal stood up and went to talk with her. It sounded like an argument was starting outside. He cringed and spat once more into the urinal, then flushed it a couple of times. The black would need to be scrubbed off. He caught the tail end of Sal trying to explain that Larry would be fine and they’d go back to their table and he wouldn’t eat anymore, but the girl had backup by now, and they were more adamant that Larry leave. He froze at the sink where he was rinsing his mouth out when he heard them speak up deliberately loud enough for him to hear, “and how do you know he’s not about to go off the rails and kill the first person he sees? News said they’re dangerous, and I’m inclined to believe that, so you and he can both get out of here.”

Larry bared black-stained teeth and marched over to Sal, taking his elbow as Sal started to argue again. “Yeah, let’s go. This place’s coffee sucks anyway.”

“Wait, what’s going on,” Ashley called when she realized that Larry was headed for the door instead of their table. She didn’t react when Todd put a hand on her shoulder. Neil and Chug were still seated at the table, craning to watch.

“Didn’t you hear? No monsters allowed,” Larry called, his voice ratcheted up and hoarse. Sal had taken his arm back and was staring between Larry, the diner staff, and his friends as everything fell apart. He looked back at the waitress again with narrowed eyes then chased after Larry as he stormed back out. He felt alienated, more awful now than the simple anxiety that had accompanied him that morning when the plan had been made to begin with. He wanted to cry, and he wanted to lash out, but he reeled it in, tensing up when he felt a hand on his arm trying to get him to turn around. He grimaced down at Sal trying to get him to stay, then back at Ashley yelling into the diner that she’d be calling corporate about this discrimination. That was the last straw, and Larry turned around, shaking off Sal’s efforts to try and lead him away.

“Don’t. Don’t fucking bother! I _am_ a monster now and you know it! They know it!! I sure as fuck know it!!! Do yourselves a favor and leave before I fucking eat you too!”

His voice echoed around the quiet street, drawing the attention of a few lone pedestrians. A hot pit of shame blossomed in his gut as he turned to leave amid the shouts of his friends.

\---

A gentle knock on warped, old wood barely registered when it came through the dark of the treehouse. The only light was a petering, tiny flame, held in unsteady fingers. Sal’s head came up over the lip of the treehouse’s floor entrance and stayed there, his mask looking like it was floating, disembodied in the dimness.

“Larry-face?” he called quietly, frowning deeply when the other man moved, shaking out the match that was burning down close to his fingers. He didn’t react when Sal grabbed the flashlight they’d left up here and turned it on him.

Lifting himself up into the treehouse, Sal observed the way Larry was sitting against the rear wall, taking in the way his hair rested lank over his shoulder, the smudges of makeup like he’d tried to rub it off with his bare hands. He sucked in a quiet breath when Larry held up his hand, showing the slightly burnt mark on his palm.

“I can’t feel it, Sally,” he nearly whispered, looking on the verge of tears. “It doesn’t hurt or anything. ‘S fucked up, right?”

“Aw, Lar…”

Larry didn’t move much as Sal came to sit beside him, taking his burnt hand and running his thumb around the edge of the spot that should have been reddened and blistered. He looked back up when he heard Larry’s head thump gently on the wooden wall beside him.

“They’re right, Sal. All of ‘em. Travis, Neil, fuckin’...what’s her name from the diner, Emily? I-”

“No, they’re not,” Sal snapped, cutting him off and scowling up at him, his frown evident in his tone.

“Sal, I killed people. I _ate people._ ”

“Yeah, so did a bunch of other people. Hell, Chug ate people-”

“But he didn’t know it!”

 

“Neither did you!”

“Bologna doesn’t beg for its life!!”

Larry sucked in a hard breath at that, teeth bared, eyes shut tight as his brow knitted, anguish written in every line of his face.

“Sal, I’m fucking evil. I...I remember things. I dream about them. I…

“I killed Sierra. I ate…”

Sal reached up and curled his arms around Larry’s head, encouraging him to lean, even if he couldn’t hold on.

“I was so...empty. It was cold, and raining and all I could think was how _hungry_ I was. Like I was empty, but there was this...instinct. I knew what I could do. So I just...I went. And I did it. I ate her.”

A sob wrenched out of Larry without the accompaniment of tears, and Sal knew it had to hurt. Maybe not physically, but not everything had to. It broke his heart, listening to Larry breaking down, but he knew he had to let Larry get it out if he was going to be able to move on.

He rambled, about others being around and all moving slowly, walking through the rain but never really feeling wet. He talked about his head feeling so heavy, and hearing things as if everything were submerged under water. Smells that were too sharp, telling him where there were people. Moving toward warmth because it felt right. Feeling, feeling, feeling nothing and everything all at once.

He talked about the apartments, stumbling his way through the halls. Hearing pounding, screams and mutters and muffled crying. He remembered finding someone coming home in a panic and running straight into him. She hadn’t stood a chance.

“I think I was wandering for hours...I don’t know. I couldn’t find my way out again. But then there was a voice, like it was far away. And I saw Soda. She was so...she was happy to see me. It felt like I was screaming inside.

“It’s all blank after that. I don’t know what happened.”

Sal finally pushed himself to speak up, stroking his fingers through Larry’s hair, dragging them from his temple and down the back of his neck.

“You ran away, Larry. I found you.”

Lary froze and looked up, staring hard at Sal.

“I found you, up here. I didn’t want to come back up here. It was...it was so hard. But I heard something, and Chug was saying you went home. It sounded so wrong to me, like he was playing a really shitty joke on me. Then I thought maybe you’d decided to haunt the treehouse, since…”

He cleared his throat, head tilting up as the tears started to well in his eyes.

“When the men in white came to take you, I...I’d tied you to the tree. I didn’t want you to hurt yourself. They said...they said I did good.”

Several minute of silence followed, the two of them listening to the first spatters of rain outside.

Larry spoke up, so quiet Sal might have missed it if they weren’t so close.

“I wish you’d just left me alone.”

The tears welled up and choked Sal once more. “You don’t mean that.”

…

“...yeah, I do.”


	5. The Pugilist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Larry's having a hard time, y'all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a beta now! Thank you so very much to my new friend [KittyMotor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyMotor/pseuds/KittyMotor) for their suggestions and feedback and overall enthusiasm for this story. It's slowing down a bit because work is eating me alive again, but it's still coming!

Within a week, the group stopped hearing from Larry.

In another, Sal had found and replaced the batteries in the old walkie-talkies that he and Larry had once used to keep in touch when they were each stuck in their respective apartments.

The second day of Spring found Larry hunched over in the bathroom, staring at the black, sludgy remains of the breakfast he’d tried to eat without thinking ten minutes before. He’d only been home for a month and already he was inclined to believe it was a massive mistake.

“Lar-bear?” Lisa called from outside, tapping her knuckles against the bathroom door frame. She waited a few seconds before peeking in to see Larry with his head in the toilet bowl, sitting with his long legs folded framing the base of it. She let out a soft, sad sound and took a seat on the edge of the bathtub, pulling Larry’s hair back with gentle fingers and twisted it around itself to hold it back. Her hand ran down the middle of his back and he shuddered, reaching up to paw at the toilet flush, pulling the lid down so he wouldn’t have to see it, then resting his cheek on the cool plastic. Lisa’s hand continued to move up and down his back, only moving when it was time for Larry’s shot, according to the muffled beeping of the alarm clock in Larry’s bedroom.

After the dose was administered, she took a seat on the bathroom floor beside him and put a hand on his knee, gently rocking his leg back and forth.

“Mom, I’m scared,” Larry murmured with his face half-hidden by his hair, arms tucked in against his middle.

The admission was surprising; Larry didn’t often say things like that, never wanting her to worry about him, even when he was at his worst. It let her know that either he wasn’t feeling well enough to remember to keep everything to himself, or that he was trying harder to be open. She’d just have to hope that it was the latter. A repeat of that final year wouldn’t be something she could grin and bear through.

“I’m scared for the fate of our poptarts, if this is what happens when you try to eat ‘em,” she replied as gently as possible, trying to lighten the tone a little bit. When he looked back at her, she could tell by the crease of his brow that he wasn’t really in the mood for humor. She understood.

“But really, baby bear. What’s going on?”

It took a few seconds for Larry to reply. “What if the medication stops working?”

“What do you mean?” Lisa asked quietly, leaning just enough so that her shoulder was against his.

“What if...what if I wanna eat because the shots aren’t keeping me human anymore?”

“Lar, you’re not less human now just because you’re like this.”

“Mom-”

“Hush. You wanna know what I think?”

“...ok what do you think?”

Lisa smiled softly and smoothed her hand across Larry’s pale, spider-veined cheek.

“Maybe you’re getting better. Live people want poptarts, dead ones want the bloody stuff.” Her expression fell when his drew in, and he held his hands out flat, letting them hang in the air. They were shaking, more than just a fine tremor but not enough for him to be doing it on purpose. She couldn’t think of what to say about that, knowing that shaking tended to be a bad sign, regardless of whether you were dead or alive.

Larry’s voice broke as he pulled his arms back in and put his forehead down against them perched atop his knees.

“You don’t get better from dead.”

\---

A knock on the door preceded Sal’s head peeking in as he announced into Larry’s bedroom, “put your dick away, I’m taking you out to get some fresh air.” He paused when he spotted Larry though, and let the door drift open to show Sal standing in a pair of new jeans and his hands on his hips, wearing some alt-metal tee that Larry thought he recognized when he finally looked away from his canvas.

Larry was painting again. This seemed like cause for celebration, from where Sal was standing. There was paint streaked up one of his arms as if he’d bumped the canvas without realizing, and he had to wonder whether that was actually the case. Maybe Larry just hadn’t felt it. He made a thoughtful sound and rounded Larry’s side to peek.

The deep blues and purples on Larry’s skin and his brush made more sense now that Sal was seeing the work in progress: nighttime, from the bottom of a gentle dip in the landscape, periphery warped at the edges like a fisheye lens. It was strange and beautiful, like most of Larry’s art, and Sal found himself watching the steady motion of the paintbrush dragging more color into the image. It was mesmerizing in a way. Larry certainly seemed lost in it.

Then Sal’s eye drifted to another canvas, placed off against the wall out of the way and clearly still drying. How long had Larry been painting?

“What…” The thought died on Sal’s tongue before he could finish it as he examined another fish-eye warped image. This one, he recognized a view of Nockfell’s main drag with a few lit signs looking like smudged star bursts. Other figures around, all facing away, walking with their arms limp at their sides.

When he moved it he found a dry painting that looked like a closeup of a face, eyes rolled up.The perspective looked like the point of view of someone hovering over the victim. It made him shudder. He recognized the color of the eyes and the hair was splayed out and flecked with blood.

“Larry?” he said quietly as he stood back up straight again, frowning at his friend still working at this new painting. He was carefully dotting color into the upper corners, whites and blues and a red fleck that made Sal think it might be a plane’s wing lights. He understood what was going on. He wasn’t sure he liked this.

His hand slid across Larry’s back, fingers hooking around a wrinkle in his shirt. This close he could tell there was some definite need for a shower, though Larry didn’t seem to produce much by way of bodily odor anymore. It sank in even more that this really was about all Larry had been doing for the last few days, if not the last two weeks.

“You should come hang out, just you and me this time. This doesn’t seem healthy,” he pointed out quietly, watching the scenery come together. It seemed to blur around the edges of details, making Sal remember the rain from that night.

He started to think more about it, wondering what it was like from the perspective of the risen dead, but Larry interrupted in a very matter of fact tone, “trust me, it helps.”

“Helps?”

“Like, it helps me keep everything straight. Separates what’s all nightmares and what’s real.”

Sal blinked at him, brow furrowed. “Nightmares? You dream?”

“Yeah, all the time,” Larry replied, as if surprised Sal would ask. Then he amended, “well, it’s more like my brain’s sorting out stuff that happened to me before, so it puts it out there like nightmares. I’m pretty sure most of it is just memories. Shit’s exhausting, man.”

“That’s...not comforting.”

“I know, right?”

Sal grimaced as he watched Larry go back to the painting. His chin perched on Larry’s shoulder, eye moving between the various small details, from the clothes on the figures around the central point of view to the stars overhead. Larry had gotten so much better at painting in the years they’d been friends. His subject matter always stayed fairly morbid though, and this certainly fit the bill.

After some silence, Sal nudged his head against the side of Larry’s.

“Hey. I know you don’t like...sweat or anything anymore, but you are still getting kinda funky. D’you forget to shower again?”

Larry paused as he thought about that, and realized that Sal was right. With the exception of his first day back, he couldn’t actually remember whether or not he’d taken a shower in the last few weeks. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, but it was different now that he couldn’t actually feel himself getting grimy. The most he washed was the makeup off his face the last time he’d gone out in public. While he was considering it, he looked down at his hands and realized that not only did he have paint under his nails and caked into the creases of his knuckles, but it was up his wrist and halfway to his elbow, and several drips had made it onto his clothes, and even on the top of one of his bare feet. He sighed and conceded quietly that he should go and wash up. He was overworking this piece anyway.

When he closed the bathroom door behind him, Larry was surprised to turn around and see Sal there, already unbuckling his prosthetic and taking his hair out of the ponytail he’d been wearing.

“Whoa, hey, Sal, what-”

“I’m helping,” he replied without waiting for Larry to finish his thought. “Clearly you’re not very good at remembering to clean up on your own, so here I am.”

“Oh my god, dude,” Larry couldn’t help but snort, just shaking his head as he started to strip out of his painting shirt. He paused, looking back at Sal with a soft pout, worry deepening the lines around his mouth and forehead. He watched the smaller man approach and nearly flinched back away from the gentle grip on his arm.

“Show me yours, I’ll show you mine,” Sal quipped, and Larry couldn’t help the rough sort of huff of laughter it startled out of him. He shook his head, but moved away to be able to strip the rather stiff shirt off and drop it on the ground in the corner. His spine stood out just like Sal remembered, diminished muscle mass making him look closer to how he had as a teenager. He found himself missing the bulk, but he didn’t want to bring it up and make Larry any more self-conscious than he clearly already was.

Instead of bringing it up, he just followed suit and pulled his shirt off over his head, shaking his hair back out and down his back. He jumped a little when cool fingers slid over his sides and he looked up at Larry, pale eyes looking down into his as if searching for something, perhaps hesitation or fear. He just lifted himself up to nudge the intact side of his nose against Larry’s and eased himself up against the other man’s body. For everything that was different about him now, Sal could still feel all those little things he remembered from before: the way Larry’s hands squeezed just so when he pushed his body up against the larger one, the way he stepped forward with his weight on one foot, the way he closed his eyes before their lips met as if trying to memorize it by feel alone. Larry’s back hit the bathroom door and he sucked in a breath, leaning his head back against it. Sal looked up at him as his eyes opened up and focused on the ceiling.

“See, told you we just needed some practice,” he joked, drawing a somewhat unwilling smile from Larry again. He lifted himself up again and pecked the corner of Larry’s mouth, then headed for the bathtub again to start the water and make sure it was warm by the time they actually got in. Part of Larry wanted to question whether this was smart, whether Sal really would continue to be comfortable with this. After all, what if everything he was afraid of came true? What if he was only getting more and more dead in spite of everything? What if he hurt someone? What if he hurt Sal?

He didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore. He’d caused enough pain in his life.


	6. You Don't Know How Lucky You Are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mini-chapter because the text string didn't really fit in with what I had planned before and after. but also HELLO I AM BACK FROM HIATUS tentatively anyway. It's been a rough last few months.

Sal laid awake, scowling at his phone after having been woken up by another shitty, bloody nightmare. He thumbed a snake around the dully glowing screen for several minutes, until the little angled line ran into itself and he promptly flipped over to the string of messages that he and Todd had kept slowly going since eighth grade. He stared at the last text, a generic sign-off, then thumbed the first number with his lips pressed tight together. Then he clicked it and slowly typed out the least innocuous thing possible.

todd can we talk-

It took some time for Todd to get back to him and when Sal’s phone buzzed he was dozing again. He could only think in small words by now, squinting in the dark.

-I hope you realize it’s 2am. What do you need?-

smth is up with larry-

-Be more specific?

Some hesitation. Then, u have any idea if the zoms can start getting better-

-As in recovering, or

yeah-

-There hasn’t been any documented evidence of them improving beyond the stability the neurotriptyline shots give them, no.

oh-

ok-

bc he keeps dreaming and arent they supposed to not be able to do that-

and lisa says he tried to eat breakfast-

There was a bit of satisfaction in thinking that maybe he’d managed to wake Todd up enough to really be paying attention.

-That doesn’t sound good. Has there been anything else? Incidents of aggression or maybe talking about being thirsty?

no not that im aware of-

ill keep an eye out tho-

speaking of can you watch neil-

-What do you mean?

i mean watch him-

not like one of the dead but like what he says n shit-

that wasnt cool before-

Todd hesitated to reply for just a little too long for his liking.

todd-

-I understand. I’ll talk to him.

and tell me if anything turns up that will explain this-

-Of cours

i dont want smthing bad to happen to him-

what if they take him away-

Sal’s heart sank as he waited for Todd’s rebuttal. He scowled once more when he saw the text pop up.

-If they decide to take him back to the treatment center there isn’t much we can do about it.

todd please-

-We’ll figure something out. For now, go to sleep. Freaking out helps no one.

fine-

night-

Long fingers with dark painted nails drifted down into his field of vision as he closed his phone and tucked it under his pillow. He looked up the length of the bare arm to the bed-mussed cloud of brown hair above him and moved close to the edge of the bed without leaving the pallet that had been set up for him, tucking his face into the cool, rough palm as he tried once more to doze off. The floor sucked, and it was chilly with its threadbare carpet, but the bed just wasn’t big enough to fit them both on it without one of them being mashed against the wall or else hanging halfway off the edge and no matter how sweet the idea was, he and Larry had both agreed that him sleeping on top of Larry would be the certified worst, and one of them would end up falling out of the bed before morning.

God, the floor really did suck though.

Sal caught himself half-dreaming about when they were in high school. Still recovering from the human lunchmeat and meeting the ghosts and learning about a cult and rituals under the apartments, he and his friends had tried so hard to maintain a facade of normal teenage bullshit. Hormones, making faces at sex ed even though everyone knew that just about everyone else had either fucked or at least touched someone else by sophomore year. It had mostly consisted of slides about STDs anyway, with graphic photos of infections displayed to a bunch of adolescent shits that made over the top noises of disgust. Larry had been doodling on his notebook and refusing to pay attention.

His train of thought continued to meander like that until he had slipped unnoticed into sleep again. He dreamed of a dance that he had refused to find a date for. He’d ended up going with Larry and Ash, the latter claiming that they were both her date for the evening. Once none of them were even remotely taking it seriously, it was a lot more bearable. He could still remember Larry’s highwater suit pants too tight around the waist and thighs, like he’d found a pair from middle school. Ash and her ridiculous but still cute lavender dress and the flats her mom had lent her when she’d refused pumps. They’d all mugged for the camera when it came time to get photos taken to commemorate the night.

In the morning, things would look better. He could gripe at Larry about the floor. Lisa could share breakfast and they could plan for the day. He still wanted to go out and maybe get some sunlight on Larry now that it was warming up outside. They could find somewhere to hang out and...he’d figure out the rest when they got there. This would be ok. He’d make it be ok. They _deserved_ to be ok.


	7. Flesh And Bone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Larry and Maple have a heart to heart (woweewow Maple with actual spoken dialog, what a concept), then plot developments happen.

This morning the sun was hidden behind clouds and the threat of chilly rain. He thought, just for a moment, that he wished he could feel it when the wind picked up and the cold would bite the way it used to.

Larry found himself thinking about all of the things he thought he should be feeling right now. Grass beneath him. Cold humidity from the lake. His hair whipping about when the wind picked up and made the ponytail it was tied in thrash. He thought distantly that he wanted to bite down on a strip of tinfoil and see if it made his teeth feel just as weird as it had when he was a kid.

When muffled footsteps came up behind him on the hill, he was almost too lost in thought to register them. He hadn’t even realized that the music that had been playing from his headphones had long since stopped and been replaced by the mild tinnitus that he’d developed after years of heavy metal played too loud on his stereo. He listened to the high-pitched whine of his own eardrums for a moment, until he realized that someone else was standing beside him, hands in the pockets of a purplish-grey zipper hoodie.

“Hey, Maple,” he murmured, making himself a little smaller where he sat, as if he needed to to make room beside him on this empty hilltop.

She grunted quietly as she settled down a foot away, legs crossed and posture hunched some as she looked out in the same direction he’d been staring. “Y’know, you kinda scared us, wandering off like that.” Her head tilted some as she watched him, mostly expressionless. She shook her head when he held up his cigarette pack and offered her one. She could tell that Larry was waiting for her to scold him for smoking, but it really wasn’t her place. So she didn’t say anything else.

Shaking her hair back from her face with the breeze turned, Maple fidgeted some with a particularly long blade of grass in front of her, watching it turn a darker green where her thumbnail creased it.

“Larry, are you hiding from us?” she asked quietly, looking back up at the water.

It took Larry a minute to answer, as if he really had to think about the question. “No,” he finally replied. “I just...I wanted…” What did he want? He thought about that as he lit his cigarette. “I guess I wanted to see if coming all the way out here would help anything. Town sucks, the apartments are busted, the treehouse isn’t an option.”

Maple made a soft sound. It made sense to her. Larry turned to ask her why she didn’t question it but was interrupted before the first word made it out of his mouth.

“You know what’s weird?” she asked. “I slept through the rising. Soda was still teething, me and Chug were trading off making sure she could sleep, giving her little mints and keeping her chew rings cold. I didn’t know anything about it ‘til I got up and saw the news in the morning. I thought...god, that’s so scary, what if it’s like the horror movies? What if that’s how the world’s gonna end?

“What you don’t really think about is the people that’re just walkin’ around, following everyone else, eating...anything and everything. What if… Y’know, what if they don’t wanna be doing what they’re doing? And then you’d see the news reports about the military, and the cities in complete lockdown, and everyone’s saying different stuff. We have it under control. We have to quarantine all the important people. We can’t fight back, we can fight back, we’re all gonna turn into zombies or no we’re only gonna turn if we’re bit or whatever else and then…”

She looked back at Larry, who had pulled his hands into the sleeves of his hoodie, worrying his painted nails against the frayed cuffs.

“And then you’d hear about the ones that wander back home, like lost animals. Larry, I know what you did.” She continued when he swallowed audibly, reaching to lay a hand on the knobbly knee close to her as Larry fidgeted where he sat. “I know you found your way back to the basement. We don’t know how you got in but you were there. Chug was visiting with Lisa, like all of us did for a long time. He saw you, wandering around in that really dumb suit and all covered in dirt and crap and he said you…”

“Soda was there,” Larry said quietly, picking up after Maple hesitated. “I remember. I heard her.”

“She talked about that for a week. She talked about Larry-face in the downstairs and I thought maybe it was because of your mom but then Chug…” She paused, wiping her fingers under her eyes, sniffing but continuing as steadily as ever. “When he told me what happened, it was like that light turned back on. You chose not to hurt anyone. So we thought maybe that if we called someone, you could go to that treatment place in Portland, up by the lake where that sanitorium was. The doctors took you away after a couple of days.”

Larry didn’t have anything to say to that. He was watching the wisp of smoke rising from the cherry of his cigarette. He had hurt people. He knew he had. He’d have to live with that but he didn’t have the energy to argue the fact. Not when Maple was looking at him, unflinching and steady, like she believed that in spite of everything, Larry was still worthy of their friendship.

He almost missed the movement of her hand in her pocket, tucking something back into it.

Maple broke after a few seconds of hard staring, looking a little bit sheepish. His nose wrinkled when she started to explain: they’d sort of taken Lisa by surprise that morning, invading to try and take him somewhere so he wouldn’t be shut up in his room all day. They were polite, always polite, but took for granted that they were welcome in the basement apartment and hadn’t actually registered more than “Larry’s not here” before reaching his room and realizing that nobody was, in fact, there. They’d been worried, she admitted, and went looking for him. She explained that when Lisa had gone to check on Larry this morning, she’d found a note on his bed alongside an emptied phial. He’d taken his shot, she’d said, and then he wanted to take a walk. There was nothing else. But she had been talking about how she knew he was fine. He was, after all, a grown man. He could take care of himself. He would come back.

Lisa had tried, and ultimately failed, to contain the fallout of immediate panic when Ashley asked her where Larry had gone. She didn’t know, she’d said. He hadn’t told her.

Unfortunately, when anything happened around town, it spread real fast unless it was the type of thing that was actively being covered up. They were already trying to find him when Travis had caught on and started announcing that Larry had gone off his meds and was about to attack people. Larry made a face, sneering around the butt of his smoke. Travis hated him, and they all knew the feeling was mutual. There was no foreseeable happy ending to this bullshit.

Maple just rolled her eyes at it all. “You’re not like that, anyway. You’re a good person, Larry-face. Besides, the only thing I’ve ever seen you rip apart with your teeth is a pizza. Which everyone agrees is gross, by the way. Learn how to use a pizza cutter.”

Larry looked cartoonishly affronted. “Hey, leave my pizza habits alone, Canada.”

“That is still the worst nickname.” Maple snorted quietly and looked around at the road nearby, where her car was sitting beside a trail map of the nearby woods. “Anyway, let’s go before Sal shits himself.”

“Coming out here didn’t help, anyway,” Larry muttered, pushing himself up and wincing at a pop from one of his joints. He offered Maple a hand up then wrapped an arm loose around her shoulders. She resumed her hunched posture, head bowed, though she was smiling faintly. Her phone came back out of her pocket, and she flipped through the half dozen new messages before responding to one of them, then unlocking the car.

Slouching down in the passenger seat, Larry tossed the butt of his cigarette out onto the asphalt to be extinguished by the rain that was just starting to fall. “Just for the record? If I see Travis I’m decking him.”

“Duly noted.”

\---

Larry was confused when they pulled up outside of the two-storey house where Sal lived with Neil and Todd. He was cut off by Maple making increasingly loud, short noises that were specifically to interrupt him until he gave up, complete with a hand raised at him, which he declared incredibly rude and he’d totally be telling on her for it. He still followed her inside, joining her and Chug on the couch and taking Soda from him when her arms came up. Larry was happy to see her, but bewildered until Sal’s head popped out from the doorway leading to the kitchen, eyes narrowed at him in (understandable) anger.

Larry’s hands came up in a ‘don’t look at me’ sort of way. “Look, I understand why the search party, but I didn’t go very far,” he argued weakly at the accusatory tone that Sal was pointedly _not_ using at him. They could talk about it later. For now though, Larry wanted to know just why he’d been carted here, rather than home where his mom could tut at him much more efficiently.

“I was talking to Todd about what you said about being hungry,” Sal explained, pausing to let Larry groan about it before continuing. “He started talking about changing the shots so your brain starts getting better faster.”

“Neurogenesis,” Todd clarified, coming out of the kitchen with a dish towel over his shoulder. “There’ve been reports of enclaves of the undead in Europe coming up with their own recipes for the ones living off the grid. They keep trying to post it online but it gets censored really fast. I’ve been talking to someone in the UK though, and they came up with something that’s doing the same thing the neuro shots do, but faster and with more permanent effects. The only catch is the side effects. Seizures, muscle spasms, nervous misfires, tics they didn’t have in life.”

Larry caught on about halfway through the explanation and his brow furrowed deeply. “You have ideas for fixing that, don’t you?”

“I need willing test subjects to be sure, but yes. Chemistry isn’t exactly in my wheelhouse, but between the updated information from the CDC, the distilleries overseas, knowing the ingredients of your shots and, hopefully, having an appropriate subject to apply it to, we’ll be able to expedite the refining process. If nothing else, it’ll let you spread your shots out if we can figure out how to keep the serum in your system.”

Larry was quiet for a long while as he considered that. He noticed glances exchanged between the group and shrugged, hands tucking up under his armpits.

“Shit, sure, why not? Worst that could happen is I die again.”

It fell incredibly flat.

Sal, looking deadly serious, finally approached Larry, looking up at him with a frown that extended to his eyes. It made Larry concede, rather than pushing it any more.

“Fine. but if we’re trying to get proper results with this, we’ll probably have to wait until the dose after you get a batch finished so the shots don’t overlap and it doesn’t fuck up your data collection, right?”

Todd nodded at that. It was the smart approach, after all, and very reasonable.

“Would you like to stay here in the interrim?” he asked, and the atmosphere of the room shifted. Neil got up and left, shooting Todd a look as if he couldn’t believe what was being proposed in his goddamn living room. Larry just gestured after him, pissed and bewildered.

“What the fuck is his problem?” he demanded when Neil was upstairs and out of earshot. Todd just grimaced and Sal shook his head.

“It’s not really our place to say,” Todd started awkwardly, “but he’s had to deal with a lot, when it comes to the rising. He lost a lot of people. It’s nothing against you, but I think you’re sort of his scapegoat as the resident undead guy.”

Sal broke in with an argument. “That doesn’t excuse it, though. Larry’s just as much his friend as any of ours. He needs to try and remember that.” He stopped with Larry’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, the taller man’s chin coming to rest atop his head.

“Even if he doesn’t, it’s not something anyone can change. I’m gonna go home for tonight though. Text me when you have some kind of magical breakthrough.” With that, Larry withdrew again and moved to the side of the couch, bending over the arm of it to look Soda in the face as the little girl shoved most of her hand into her mouth to suck her fingers. “Anyway, this is the most important opinion in the world right here. Whatcha say, little dude?”

Soda’s face lit up gleefully, and she took her hand out of her mouth to extend it to him. He raised his fist, which she responded to with a sloppy, sticky fistbump.

Fuck yeah.

Larry went home with the reassurance that they would figure this out. He had to face down questions from his mother at first, but overall she seemed supportive of him spending more time with his friends. She worried about him, sure, but she always worried about him. She didn’t say so in so many words, but Larry knew her well enough to know when she was fretting more than was healthy. He just hated that so much of that was his fault, and had been so, at least in his mind, for the past twenty-five years. He wanted to be better this time around.

When the call came around a week later for him to come and test out the first week’s worth of Todd’s newly concocted neuro shots, Larry packed a bag to go and stay a few nights. He’d need to be observed during this entire process, from the initial injection to the full daily routine. Todd and Sal had explained to him that the process would be invasive, to which he’d responded that his personal bubble hadn’t existed since he’d been shoved into the Portland treatment facility. He had to explain that it meant they had his blessing when they started to try and backpedal.

The first night sleeping at the little two-story house was weird. If it weren’t for his new, weirdly rigid sleep cycle, he wouldn’t have been able to sleep at all without an ambien to help him along. It was also new to be able to crawl into Sal’s bed and actually fit, the queen-sized mattress offering a lot more room to get comfortable and allow for much less risky tossing and turning. Sal had joked that they had a lot more room to maneuver here, but someone had a bedtime. Larry just made a point of sprawling right into Sal’s half of the bed and playing dead.

The nerves didn’t truly set in until the following morning. He hadn’t counted on straps, but Todd assured him that it was just so that he wouldn’t be hurt in the event of a seizure. Larry admitted to him that that wasn’t exactly comforting, but bowed his head forward, let Sal gather his hair up off the back of his neck and peel away the bandage covering the divot in his spine, and braced.

The smells, the sounds, the intense flashbacks were all the same. He hated it. He shivered violently until his vision cleared, then dry heaved when his stomach rolled, straining against the velcro straps. The chilly disk of a stethoscope was pressed against his back under the loose t-shirt he’d worn to bed. Todd’s muted little murmur didn’t tell him anything either way about what he heard. He just stared blearily forward, until the pale blob of Sal’s mask floated into his vision, warm hands lighting on his cheeks.

“Hey there, beautiful,” he slurred like a cartoon character post-hammering. He wasn’t in much of a position to argue when Sal moved away.

Thankfully the pseudo-drunkenness faded quickly, and along with it, all the little things he’d felt for those few minutes. He couldn’t feel the warmth of his friends’ hands or the cool equipment being used to take readings from him. It killed his mood, frankly. It only improved somewhat when Lisa called to check in. Sal talked to her while Larry recovered.

“Hey there baby bear,” she chirped when Larry was handed his phone. He could tell the forced cheerfulness was just that: forced. Still, he refrained from calling it out. He listened to what she had to say about what the guys were doing, which really only boiled down to “ok, have fun doing your science, and remember to set your watch so you don’t miss your shots.”

He thanked her and told her he loved her, then went to lie facedown on the couch and make grabby hands at Sal until he was joined.

“Got any good movies? Let’s watch Iron Giant.”

Sal settled down in front of the couch near Larry’s head, dropping his voice and letting it reverberate in his mask as he did an impression of the Giant himself saying _“Superman”_. Larry grinned and buried his face in Sal’s neck. Whatever else happened here, at least Larry could pretend he was normal for a little while, in between Todd’s prodding. Yeah, this could work out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Henlo this is your friendly neighborhood lemon very happily reporting a return to writing at least somewhat regularly. I'm still working on Coins though I don't have a strict ending for it just yet. I figure it'll come to me in its own time and in the meanwhile I have the next few chapters framed out.
> 
> Only tangentially related though, I'm looking for places to RP in the Sally Face 'verse. I'm gonna be super strict on the Don't Ping Me If You're A Minor. I'm way overage and would rather not get anyone in trouble, nor would I like to be scrutinized by real world people for throwing my iteration of Larry at someone that hasn't yet reached age of majority. I have him over on Dreamwidth and I'm on Discord if anyone wants to chat at least.
> 
> ...Should I make a Coins discord server?  
> y/n


	8. If I Don't Have To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A more light-hearted episode in this neverending emotional rollercoaster.

Nobody else was awake. Nobody was there to stop him from shuffling his way to the kitchen and pulling a box of poptarts from the cupboard. Their schedules just hadn’t had the chance to attune to that of their newest resident so in turn, a Larry on autopilot just couldn’t be stopped.

The foil wrapper was barely off before the pastry in question was stolen out of his sleepy fingers.

“‘Ey,” Larry muttered, reaching out in the direction that his poptart had gone and ending up pouting down at big green eyes that looked far too enthused for how early in the morning it was. Ashley just smirked up at him around the bite she’d taken out of the strawberry-and-cardboard flavored pastry. He didn’t even think to question how she’d gotten in; presumably she’d been given a spare key to the house. It made sense to him, at least.

He hadn’t even registered the bag Ash was carrying until she dropped it onto the kitchen table, then hopped up onto the counter to sit and munch on the breakfast that, now that he was awake enough, he realized he shouldn’t have wanted in the first place. He continued to pout at her nonetheless.

“Don’t give me the puppy dog face, we’re so not cleaning chewed poptart out of the sink again,” she scolded him around her mouthful, looking rather haughty as she leaned back with her legs, the artful rips in her leggings showing her pale knees. Larry just stuck his tongue out at her and went to sit at the kitchen table, peering into the black and skull-patterned tote bag. He was staring at the assortment of cosmetics therein when footsteps tapped across the tile floor quietly. He slumped forward some at sudden weight against his back and a snarled blue curtain of hair fell over his shoulder.

“Morning,” Sal said sleepily to the kitchen at large. Ashley chuckled at him and reached behind her into a cupboard to fetch him a glass, holding it out so that he could fill it with orange juice. After popping a straw into it, Sal sat down, chin propped on his hand and sipping at the juice with the straw poked under the edge of his mask.

The silence drew out comfortably as Sal and Larry slowly woke up, and soon the beeping of a couple of different watches went off from upstairs. Ash scooted off the counter to accompany Sal to find the little zipper case that held Larry’s syringe gun, then listened as he explained Todd’s updated regimen for the administering of their friend’s medication. She seemed intrigued, and stuck by him as he headed back to the kitchen where Larry had already stuck a wooden spoon between his teeth and assumed the position with his head down and hair parted away from the back of his neck.

After watching them go through the motions and then fixing Larry’s hair back away from his face and up off his neck, Ash tugged a chair over in front of him. Larry figured this was about the bag full of makeup she’d brought.

“So you know how when you get shit it’s because you went outside looking like the walking dead,” she started as she pulled out a few different pallets, opening a flat-looking foundation and fishing up a makeup sponge. “I figure if we cover the veins and the weird patches, people will leave you alone.” She looked around when Sally joined her, sitting on the edge of the table to get a better view of Larry as the makeup was sponged onto his cheeks and around his mouth first. If anyone could help him via cosmetics, it would probably be her, Sal and Larry agreed, though Larry didn’t verbalize it. He trusted her eye for it and knew her intentions were good. Sal seemed to have rethought his assertion that it wasn’t necessary for Larry to cover up, favoring his friend’s peace of mind over his own ideals. The world just wasn’t as kind as he wished it was.

A few shades of foundations around different parts of his face later and Ash dug a little bottle that she spritzed his face with, explaining that it would set what they’d done and make it harder to smudge off without actual makeup remover. Larry hummed his assent and adjusted to sit forward when she brought out a couple of brushes and lipsticks. She could blend the colors to emulate that blood under the skin flush and fix most of that darkness that seemed to have gotten darker still since he’d been home. It was probably because the blood vessels were still broken and the lividity had never faded in the first place, she mused, just talking in stream of consciousness as she dabbed and poked and wiped until she could move up to his eyes. That wouldn’t be as hard, since she knew the eyeliner he preferred and how to blend it outward to create the bags under his eyes to the best effect. There was a moment of amusement when Sal noted that there was still the slightest bit of shimmer to the eyeshadow Ash was applying to the lower eyelid, Larry smirking and proclaiming that he was just fucking fine with being a little bit glittery and he’d thank Sal not to get all primadonna on him.

A dusting of rouge and a bit of eyebrow pencil to his mole later and Ash finally rearranged Larry’s hair to frame his face and cover the paleness of his ears then handed him a magnifying mirror.

“Wow,” he breathed. It wasn’t perfect, but it was so much _better_. The only thing out of place was his eyes, which looked more like contacts in contrast to the rest of it. He looked back up at her in time to get another spritz of setting spray, then was shoved out of his chair by Sal.

“Me next,” he demanded, sitting with his hands on the edge of the chair, leaning forward and letting Ash unclip the bottom of his mask and set it up on top of his head. It was still in the way, but it also meant that if Sal started to get anxious or otherwise needed to put it back on quickly, it would be right there.

Larry kept looking back at his reflection in the mirror between watching Ashley putting some more outlandish color on the smoother half of Sal’s face, only half listening to her commentary about this pallet working with Sal’s green eye better than the blue that matched his natural eye. The two of them were discussing what might look good with each of the different colored glass eyes he’d collected as Larry listened, and for once, Larry was comfortable. Happy. Things were normal again. It helped that he couldn’t feel the makeup he was covered in.

Sal was looking like a certified scene kid one rainbow extension shy of an XD by the time he looked back at Larry, expression going from smug to concerned.

“Lar, you ok?” he asked, and for a moment the question seemed to come out of nowhere, until Larry heard the sound of a drop on the table. When he looked down, there was a dark burgundy drip on the fake wood. He touched the spot just under his nose with a soft frown. His fingers came away with blood on them.

“‘M fine,” he murmured, just staring at the smudge. Then his vision doubled. Trebled. It went white and distantly, he heard clattering on tile and shouts.

When his vision cleared, Larry was on the floor. He was tipped half onto his side and his head was swimming. He could tell that the shapes around him were furniture legs and socked feet, but it wasn’t connecting. What happened?

As he stirred, a weight sank against him, fingers running back through his hair and twisting it up at the back of his head. A hand ran down the side of his neck and he sighed raggedly.

“You gotta stop scaring me,” a gentle voice scolded him, muffled but close by. “I mean it. I’m gonna cover you in bubble wrap and keep you in my room.”

Larry turned back onto his back, groaning at the ceiling then scanning around the room. Todd and Ash were sitting at the table, the former with a notepad in hand that he was furiously scribbling on and the latter nervously chewing at her lips. They both looked down at him as he tried to sit up, bumping his head on the underside of the table.

“Shit,” he hissed reflexively, putting his hand up just above his head. He slouched back again and reached to put his hand on Sal’s shoulder, the smaller man shuffling forward on his knees and once more laying his hands on Larry’s neck, thumbs framing his face. He leaned his head into the touch, cheek into Sal’s palm. “I’m sorry, man. God I’m so fucking sorry,” he breathed as he pulled his knees up in front of him. He was hushed and fingers once more dragged through the top of his hair, nails scratching gently along his scalp.

“How are you feeling?” Sal asked quietly, behaving as if it were only the two of them resting on the kitchen floor. Larry scowled and started to pick some at the paint on his thumbnail.

“Weird,” he replied, then reached up to pull a little on one of Sal’s pigtails. “Numb, still. Nauseous but I can’t help that.”

“Come on, let’s go upstairs.” Sal stood and held his hands out for Larry to take, leaning back to help him to his feet. Larry reluctantly followed, picking at the dried crust of blood on his lip. He looked down at Sal’s fingers still laced between his, leading him without pulling him along. He smiled a little in spite of himself.

Sal’s bedroom door was closed behind them and Larry moved away to sink into the beanbag that they’d brought up here the day after he’d been invited to move in. He didn’t move until Sal settled in beside him and started to play with the ends of his hair.

“Hey, Sal?” he said quietly, looking around at his friend with his hands in his lap, nails once more scraping against one-another. “If…” He cleared his throat. “If it turns out that all this stuff is because I’m getting more immune to the neuro… Can you promise me something?”

Sal didn’t like where this was going. Still, he nodded, curling a lock of dark hair around his finger.

“If I stop responding to the meds, I need to know you can put me down. I don’t-” He swallowed hard, looking Sal in the eye. “I don’t want to hurt anyone else and I trust you to do the right thing.”

Sal’s voice choked a little. “Jesus, Larry, don’t put that on me,” he argued, shifting in place then turning his back to the beanbag and reclining against it. He didn’t want to have this talk. They could worry about it in the future, and his refusal to look at Larry said as much. So Larry just let himself be boneless in his favorite seat for a little while, his arm wrapped loosely around Sal’s shoulders. Sal relaxed after a minute and laced his fingers in between Larry’s, nails scratching lightly between his knuckles.

“I think you’re getting better,” Sal said after a little while longer. “Think about it: why would you want food that’s actually food, or friends to stay close to, or hell, even _this._ ” He gestured between them, rolling over to rest his weight on his hip then prodding gently at Larry’s leg. “Whatever this even is anymore. We never decided anything before, then stuff with my dad and your mom made it weird.”

“Didn’t stop you from being into it when I kissed you,” Larry pointed out, already looking a little better, not so stuck in his own head. Sal decided that was victory enough, and he climbed sideways into the beanbag, laying across Larry’s lap and resting his arm along the back of it. “Anyway who says we need to label anything? It’s just us, dude. You’re my best friend and that’s sure as shit not gonna change.”

Sal’s eyes scrunched up in that way that made it obvious he was smiling. “See man, that’s why I like you. You got a good head on your shoulders, even when you’re having bad brain days.”

Larry scoffed. “You say that as if I haven’t had like ten years of bad brain days.” Then he paused, blinking and looking back at an old calender that was tacked to the wall by his mom. Shit, he was closer with that comment than he thought. “Dude.”

“What?” Sally craned to try and get a look at what Larry had seen.

“Dude, I’m gonna be twenty-seven in a few months.”

“ _Dude._ ”

“ _ **Dude.**_ ”

“God, man, that means I’m twenty-five.” Sal sounded a little awed as he considered that. Larry understood; in the time he’d known Sal, he’d gotten the serious impression that Sal didn’t think he’d live this long. They’d never talked explicitly about it, but the meds on his dresser told him everything.

He was caught off-guard when Sal sat up in his lap, squirming around until he was sitting the same way. Larry rearranged his legs to let Sal sink in between them. “Personal space invasion, much?” he snorted.

“All your lap are belong to me,” Sal quipped, earning him a laugh from Larry, then a kiss to the top of his head. He felt more than heard the Fucking dweeb against his hair, and smirked behind the mask as he reached back and pulled Larry’s arms around himself. He fiddled with Larry’s fingers, examining the chipped paint on his nails and the hints of color in the creases of his knuckles from his paints. A razor-thin scar on his hand caught his attention, a leftover from when Larry had sliced his hand open with an exacto knife trying to prepare some artwork or another for showing. It had bled and bled and Sal had panicked but Larry had pressed a wad of paper towel on it and said he’d just need some orange juice and a few butterfly bandages.

He shifted when Larry’s chin came to rest on his shoulder. “You’re thinkin’ some awfully deep thoughts there,” Larry murmured, the end of his nose against Sal’s jaw.

“I just like your hands,” Sal replied, holding them up with his own, fingers laced between Larry’s and watching as Larry spread his digits to look at them himself.

“They look better when they’re full of your hands,” he said thoughtfully, then cracked a smile when Sal laughed. He knew Sal liked when he cheesed it up, as long as he wasn’t super serious about it. There were times that Sal promptly got overwhelmed and couldn’t help tearing up and Larry could only wait it out in whatever capacity Sal needed him to, be it quietly letting Sal sort it out himself, or squeezing him tight and helping him feel safe. He liked to think he’d gotten pretty good at gauging what Sal needed in those moments.

He was nudged out of his thoughts by Sal parroting his words back at him: “Now you’re thinking some deep thoughts, huh?” Larry just grinned at him and kissed the end of the nose of Sal’s mask.

“Maybe I’m thinking about how much I like your hands in my hands so now we’ve come full circle.” He spotted Sal’s ears turning pink and only laughed as he wrapped his arms more tightly around Sal. “God that’s so fucking cute.”

“I take back everything, I hate you Larry-face.”

Larry just laughed and rocked, then sat back in his beanbag again. “Fine. If you hate me then I guess I’ll just have to listen to the latest Sanity’s Fall single on my own,” he teased, fishing his iPod out of a pair of jeans he’d left on the ground and holding it up just out of Sal’s reach when he tried to snatch it. 

“I’m gonna tell Lisa you’re picking on me,” Sal warned before lunging upward to snatch the iPod and flopping right back down to untangle the headphones from around it. “And that you keep tangling your headphones keeping them like this, jesus Larry.”

“Shut up, I’m the master of untangling headphone cord,” argued Larry, even as he let Sal fuss at them. He dimly thought that this would probably be a lot sexier if he could feel Sal in his lap, but at present the only important part was that Sal was trying to get the knot out of one of his earbuds’ cords.

Curious, that.

\---

A night of dull, repetitive dreams punctuated by blood made it difficult for Larry to want to get up the following morning. He’d opted to stay with Sal and Todd again for the sake of their ongoing observation of his progress on the new medication, and unsurprisingly, his mother had approved once more. She probably took it on faith that they were trying to stay out of trouble, for whatever that was worth.

The door bumped open as he curled deeper into the blankets on Sal’s bed, grumbling quietly. He’d already had his shot for the day then explained he was “super out of it” when Sal tried to get him to move. So Sal had left without him, giving no explanation as to his intention. That turned out to be a moot point anyway, as he came back with a few canvases under his arm, almost certainly brought from Larry’s room. He ducked out again after putting them down by the foot of the bed and fetched the collapsable easel and a case holding a bunch of Larry’s art supplies to put on the floor by his dresser.

“Alright, lump. We’re gonna see what we can do about this super unfortunate melancholy you have going on,” Sal announced, keeping his tone gentle for the time being. Larry just made a show of pulling his blankets up over his head and groaning that he had done so much this week, he wanted to have a quiet day in his temporary fortress. Being so far from the treehouse and unable to get there to climb in and hide without causing a fuss was miserable. The bed sank a little when Sal sat on the end of it. “Come on, man, there’s gotta be something better than pretending you don’t exist. I brought your art stuff, maybe it’ll help.”

Larry made a soft, noncommittal noise but didn’t make a move to get out of bed. Sal sighed at him but left him to it, setting up the easel after figuring out how to lock its limbs in place again then propped an empty canvas on it. He nodded at his work then bumped the side of the bed with his foot.

“Larry. C’mon, man. You’re in this miserable funk.”

“I am the king of miserable funk, my dude,” Larry muffled from under the covers, but still didn’t come out.

Sal rolled his eyes and tossed one of the pillows that had been piled on the beanbag at Larry, then headed downstairs again. Larry thought maybe he was safe for now, until Sal returned with one of the kitchen chairs and set up in front of the easel, himself. He made a show of thumb-measuring the blanket blob that was his best friend, then started to paint and sing quietly to himself.

Eventually Larry hauled himself out of bed to peek at what Sal was doing and snorted at a pretty decent rendering of a pile of blankets with a sign over it with an arrow pointing at the blankets, the word LUMP in angular letters in brown.

“You’re improving,” he commented, then went back to the bed to flop down on top of the blankets instead.

“It was this or I started serenading you,” Sal replied. He put his name in the corner with a sharpie then sat back and observed the mound that Larry had gone back to being. “Are you awake now?”

Larry let out an overdramatic groan. “I _guess._ ”

“Good. Because we were talking and I think you should move in here with us.”

The proposition was met with silence. The subject hadn’t come up since he’d been back, but it was something he’d talked about with Sal before everything had fallen apart. Larry was skeptical, and it must have showed on his face because Sal grew more serious, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

“Come on, Larry. You practically live here already. Besides, I talked to Lisa and she’s on board.”

With his first argument preemptively shut down, Larry just scowled, running a hand back through his hair and scratching and ruffling it as he thought.

“You sure this is a good idea? I mean we’re closer to town here and that means more people and a lower concentration of people I can trust.”

“Look at it this way,” Sal said in a tone that set Larry on edge. “You’re gonna keep feeling like a bug in a jar. Might as well get something good out of it too, right? I mean come on, if you’re here with me we can get up to some weird shit.”

Larry’s expression flattened. Sal was playing with him.

“Oh my god, dude.”

He continued casually, “I mean I bet I could learn to make you feel all kinds of stuff.”

“ _Oh my god._ ”

“How would you feel about acupuncture?” Sal asked, examining the paint on his nails.

“Dude _stop,_ ” Larry laughed, face scrunched like he’d smelled something weird.

Sal lit up. “Oh, oh I know! Wax play!”

“ _Dude._ ” Larry rolled upright off the bed and used the forward momentum to throw himself into Sal. He picked the smaller man up out of his seat and threw him back around, making it harder for him to fight back as chilly lips were pressed against his neck. He barely had time to brace before Larry was blowing the nastiest, wettest raspberry on the space between his neck and shoulder, prompting him to veritably shriek. A knock came as Sal was trying to struggle away and the door cracked open just as Sal managed to wriggle away with his shirt rucked up around his chest. They both looked up as Neil and Todd peeked in on them. Todd looked amused. Neil seemed to be fighting back a smile.

“Hi guys,” Sal greeted them cheerfully, pulling half of his shirt back down while Larry peered at the two of them from behind Sal, his arms impeding Sal from righting his clothes.

“Nice to see you’re in a better mood now,” Todd commented, then walked away with Neil in tow. Sal and Larry exchanged looks, then collapsed against eachother laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coins now has a Discord server, thanks to the whole 1 person that expressed interest! It's still a work in progress, but [come and join us](https://discord.gg/nEtwcet), won't you?
> 
> The invite link doesn't expire. Perks include...uh...input on future chapters. Q&A whenever I'm around. Maybe rp if we figure that out? I have like 3 rules total that amount to Don't Be A Disrespectful Cock. The 18+ rule is definitely still in effect.
> 
> THANK YOU I LOVE YOU BYE


	9. To Your Health

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which your friendly neighborhood lemon is a sucker for a real personal growth narrative.

Streaks of black in the sink looked like molasses, making Larry’s head reel. It showed ghastly and stark against the porcelain, until the water was run and all that was left was a slightly darker couple of droplets. Larry looked down at the wound in his wrist with a sour expression, then rinsed it and the razor blade in the other hand off and pulled a box of gauze pads down to cover up the dark tally, the third in as many days. A knock on the bathroom door came as he was securing the gauze with a thin strip of bandage.

“Ocupado,” he called out through the door as he was pulling a pair of black wristbands on, shaking himself out and looking into the mirror. No changes that he could see, just a thin layer of foundation on to hide some of the worst of the discoloration around his mouth and eyes. He was applying a little bit of eyeliner when the door cracked open to show one big blue eye peeking up at him.

“You ready Lar?” Sally asked, muffled from behind the door.

“Yeah, just about,” he replied, turning his head back and forth to give himself a final once-over, wrinkling his nose at the noticeable veins in the sides of his neck and crawling up his jaw. He could put in his contacts, but he didn’t have time to fuss with makeup anymore. “Shuttle’s gonna be here in like ten minutes. What’re you gonna do with your day?” Larry asked as he stepped out of the bathroom, moving along with Sally pulling his arm around his shoulders.

Sal just shrugged. “Dunno yet. I might go back to the apartments for a while and see if I can pick up anything else. I haven’t seen Megan since you zapped her dad but I don’t think she’d just disappear like that.”

“Be careful. The building’s seen better days,” Larry warned, though he felt bad. His mom was trying so hard to keep the place together. Maybe he’d be able to go back and help her with it in a more official capacity once this nonsense was over. Sal just nodded his head, knowing what was on Larry’s mind.

They waited at the curb for the shuttle that was supposed to be coming to take Larry, as well as the area’s other undead, to some kind of seminar that was supposed to be specifically for them, and for their job prospects. Larry didn’t feel as if he should have to go to something like this just to be able to be left alone to do what he already intended to do regardless, but if it would keep the feds off him and his mom, there wasn’t much choice. Him being over the age of majority wasn’t going to save Lisa from backlash if he did something stupid.

Larry’s hand dropped out of his sweater pocket to hook around Sal’s, barely holding on but maintaining contact while they waited. Sal tangled his fingers loosely around Larry’s and eased a little closer to him to close the bit of distance between them. They only parted when they spotted the old repurposed church van coming toward the bus stop.

“Call me when you get out,” Sal said. “We can go hang somewhere.”

Larry nodded, bending to press a brief kiss to the side of Sal’s head just as the shuttle pulled up. “I’ll see you later, Sally Face.”

The van was quiet when Larry climbed in and took the last open space, on the floor beside one of the seats, a foot braced on the interior wall. He crossed his arms over his backpack and stared up through the window, spacing out even as the driver of the van confirmed his name and greeted him coolly. He was pretty damn sure this guy didn’t want to be doing this any more than it seemed the majority of the dead he was transporting wanted it. Nobody spoke on the trip out of Nockfell, and before long Larry had taken his ipod out of his pocket and set his playlist on shuffle, earbuds shoved in as he turned his music up enough to drown out the droning of the van.

Zoning out made the ride feel considerably shorter. His eyes were unfocused as he stared out of the window up at the dreary slate-colored sky, only blinking and looking around when buildings started passing into his field of view. There was a quiet murmur of voices around him at the announcement from the driver that they’d arrived, Larry only catching the last words of the statement as he pulled his headphones out and paused his music. Without the cacophonous sound of black metal to block it all out, the world came flooding back and Larry found himself getting anxious. He still really didn’t want to be here…

Walking into an auditorium full of people really wouldn’t be as nerve-wracking as it was in that moment if not for the crowd. Maybe half of them were wearing the government-mandated makeup, so at least he wasn’t the only one that thought it looked worse than the pallor did. It didn’t make it any less weird to be walking past them in a group with more like him. A few eyes turned up to him and he could count the bare eyes and sickly pupils here and there among a crowd that had opted to wear their contacts. The eyes were worse than the veins and lividity, he guessed. He could understand that.

“Thanks for coming, everybody!” A cheerful voice chimed from up at the front of the gathering, a microphone carried in the hand of a very twiggy, overenthusiastic lady in a pastel pantsuit. The same sort of immediate malaise that he got from Spirit Week assemblies set in, and Larry slumped down in his seat between an older man that smelled faintly of limburger cheese and original formula old spice, and a girl that wouldn’t stop picking at her nails even though he could immediately see her cuticles were shredded. A murmur ran through the crowd of undead and Larry fixed a dull gaze on the presenter.

Immediately, he decided he was probably going to hate this. They’d wheeled a projector out and had set it up to show on a big collapsable screen a video that looked like the kind of Public Service Announcement that would place a ridiculous amount of emphasis on God and Country™ and as soon as the house lights went down and a more somber voice started into commentary on _recent tragedies_ , Larry knew he was absolutely correct.

It only got worse from there. Around him, conversation started up between the audience, and he was looking around at the others, only half listening to the presentation as it outlined a work program while the _compliant_ , as they were called, worked toward reintegrating into society. What he was more focused on was the fact that, as the place had gotten dark and everyone was stuck watching this video on their mandatory, unpaid work service, several uniformed men with assault weapons had filed in and were standing with the guns at the low ready, and not a single one of them had their finger off the trigger. Larry sank down in his seat as a high whine started in his ears. He stared up at the screen now showing the statistics of the expected progress of reparations when the undead were put to work. The words “indentured servitude” and “slave labour” rippled through the crowd, discontent evident, though nobody dared speak up, as more and more of them had noticed the armed guards now eyeing the crowd.

He couldn’t focus on the video anymore. The murmurs were too loud. Everything was too loud, and the bodies on either side were closing in on him and oh god _oh jesus christ he was trapped_. The girl was still picking her cuticles, and the man behind him wouldn’t stop jiggling his leg and the old guy’s cologne was giving him a headache. Larry ducked his head, fingers lacing into his hair. He pulled it taught as he tried and failed to ground himself and stay focused. He’d come here willingly. He did it for his mom. He could do this. He could do this _he could do this **he couldn’t do this-**_

 

Cool air and rain hit his face seconds later. His knees smacked into the concrete and he jerked himself out of grips that came down on his arms and shoulders, hyperventilating as he curled in deeper on himself, hair plastered down around his face. He could feel himself shaking, but it was like he was experiencing it from just outside himself. He could see what he looked like, clutching his sweater around his body as he was soaked through. One of the armed men had a rifle trained on him.

“Shh.” A voice from just beside his ear cut through the rest of it, and Larry froze. “You’re gonna be ok,” it said gently into his ear. “I’ll get you home.”

“Phone?” it asked. It waited while Larry tried to figure out how to produce words again. It kept not happening, no matter how much he wanted to tell the other person to stop touching him before he imploded. A hand slid into the pocket of his sweater and a second later, he heard his phone flip open. They were navigating to his texts, and then starting to quickly text whoever they’d selected. Everything was still too loud and too bright and too intense and Larry barely registered when they moved and a vehicle pulled up close by.

He didn’t come down until they were leaving the building, a crowd of gawkers staring from the doors. A glance over at his apparent savior told him very little; dark hair, glasses, bright blue eyes. No makeup, extremely pale. When they noticed Larry staring, they opened their mouth showing slightly absurd buck teeth. He didn’t actually register what they were saying to him, but they seemed to be waiting for a response.

Instead of waiting for the numbness to subside, they just poked through Larry’s phone again, then placed a call.

\---

“Thank you for your help.”

“No prob. I take it this isn’t common.”

“No. He has his fair share of problems, but this isn’t…”

The voices droned, and Larry stared out from the couch with a towel on his head and a throw pillow squeezed against his body without really registering anything besides the vague feeling that things weren’t so bad here. He was still damp, but he didn’t quite have the wherewithal to move from where he’d been settled. He barely moved when he felt the couch beside him sink, eyes flicking over to take in the profile of the person he realized had brought him back.

“You good?” they asked, turning to him with an arched brow. Larry’s mouth opened, and he croaked an “I” before giving up. He felt incredibly fucked up, but they were giving him a very knowing sort of look. It made him squirm.

Instead of pressing further, they just leaned forward to grab something off of the coffee table situated in front of the couch. Larry realized it was a sticky note when they started writing, and he looked down at the yellow square stuck to their finger for several seconds before pulling it off and reading what they’d written. A name and phone number.

“Jonah.”

“Yeah. Go look that up when you’re not so out of it. The guy on the site has a lot of info, he’ll help you out,” Jonah explained, then sat back again, only to stand and head around the coffee table. They peeked into the kitchen, announcing that they were going now. Another round of thanks followed them out and Larry was left with an incredibly surreal feeling. Weirdness on top of weirdness on top of panic. He was so fucking tired. His eye drifted back to the sticky note, rereading the name and number. Then he flipped it over to see...a website? Along with a password, he guessed. He figured it was a help forum for the undead. Surely that something that existed.

Finally, he heaved himself out of the corner of the couch, heading for the spare room that already had most of his stuff stacked in it. A boxed mattress was propped up against one wall until he nudged it over, catching it as it fell and upending the box to shake the tightly compressed mattress out. He sat down on top of it to control the release of the ridiculous potential energy from such squished springs and prepared to cut the heavy tape keeping it all contained.

When Sal peeked in on him, he’d shunted the plastic wrapping from the mattress and had pulled a blanket from one of the garbage bags he’d stuffed his linens into, curling up with the duvet pulled up to his nose. Larry was grateful when he didn’t say anything and just took a seat on the floor beside him.

Larry’s hand crept out after a little while, curling in the hem of the too-long sweater Sal was wearing. In turn Sal fell slowly onto the bed, arm tucked up under his head.

“My room has better atmosphere, if you wanna go mope with me in there for a while,” he offered quietly, smiling with his eyes as he watched Larry starting to relax. He didn’t seem to mind that Larry wasn’t saying anything back, though he did wait for several quiet moments before picking himself up off of Larry’s makeshift bed and holding out his hand. He didn’t move until Larry had taken hold and started to drag himself back upright.

They slunk across the space between their rooms and Sal shut the door behind them. Neither of them came out until supper.

\---

A knock on the doorframe interrupted the quiet button mashing that Larry was doing while Sal sat at his desk doing homework with his headphones on. Larry paused his game and folded the system closed on his thumbs as he looked up at Neil framed in the doorway of Sally’s room. Neither of them were particularly good at hiding their expressions as they faced eachother, but neither seemed hostile either, just exhausted and wary.

“Hey, Lar,” Neil started cautiously, stepping just inside and shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

“Just get off shift?” Larry asked evenly. Neil just nodded as he tried, and failed, not to look uncomfortable. He surprised Larry by crouching down so they could be at eye level, piled into the beanbag as Larry was. Neil looked to Larry like he was trying to find the best way to articulate his thoughts. Larry wasn’t sure whether it would be kinder to prompt him, or just let him sort out his words on his own time.

He was spared having to figure it out when Neil finally spoke up.

“Hey so...look man, I wanted to say I’m sorry for what I said before. It was super not cool of me.” Larry didn’t seem to know what to say to that, so he continued, “no matter what happened, that’s not the kind of person I want to be. Besides, you’re my friend like everyone else and I do want to see you doing better. I guess I just let the emotional side of it mess with my head.”

Larry was quiet as he listened to Neil working through it. He nodded a bit when Neil trailed off. “Tell me what happened, maybe it’ll help work some shit back out,” he suggested, trying to adopt what he thought Sal’s approach to it might be. Neil caught on and smiled a little as he glanced up at Sal tapping his pencil on his notepad. It didn’t look like he’d even noticed the two of them talking yet. He’d probably be watching like a hawk when he did.

Sitting down on the floor just inside the door, Neil debated on how to start before just explaining that he, like just about everyone else, had lost friends in the rising. Larry nodded encouragingly and he went on. He wasn’t really in touch with his family these days. He’d tried to touch base with them and found out that most of them were alright, doing well even. Living on an upper floor with lots of nonperishables helped them wait out the worst of it. It was when he’d tried to touch base with friends outside of Nockfell, in the city that the reality really sank in just how dangerous it had become to go out alone. There were just too many dead, too many that were in hiding, and a lot of kids that just didn’t get the help they needed or have a place to go. The body count among the people that he cared about had drowned him in despair, and then that had hardened into anger. It made him petty and closed him off from the idea that the risen dead might need help too. He was still riding that anger when Larry had come back and then suddenly and without his input been invited into Neil’s home. It hadn’t mattered to him that Larry had already been gearing up to move in with them. It hadn’t mattered that it was Larry in the first place. To him, it felt like the people he cared about putting themselves in danger again and going right over his head to do so.

Larry listened with his arms loosely wrapped around his knee, frowning some the longer Neil talked. It made sense to him. It didn’t negate how fucked up it had felt, but it did make sense. He said as much, and Neil nodded. They were on the same page. It was a first step they hadn’t really wanted to take, but necessary. Larry was taken aback when Neil held a hand out to him, blinking briefly then taking it in a tentative grip to shake. It was at that moment that Sal finally moved his headphones down around his neck and stretched, looking down at the two of them. He cracked an unseen smile and announced that it was past time for supper. They could reconvene and make more progress later, he said, earning him an awkward little laugh from Neil and a toothy grin as Larry stood up and re-opened his game.

“Have fun, I’ll be here,” he said and went to go flop on Sal’s bed instead to pick up where he’d left off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters are coming slowly but surely! Yay! But also financial shit and job searching and a tiny trickle of commission work making it hard to concentrate on writing. Boo. Stress is bad for trying to brain words. I like where the story is going at least.


	10. Earnestly Yours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Here there be smut. It's not a lot, nor is it particularly hot and heavy, but it is smut.

“Aren’t you cold?”

Larry blinked at the sudden voice intruding on his thoughts breaking him away from staring out at the mounds of dull grey cloud sitting on the horizon. He hadn’t expected to be followed or even found up here, seated on the sloping roof of the house, but as he leaned forward, he spotted Sal’s mask seemingly floating in the dimness a couple of feet down. He took the hand that was held out to him without hesitation and helped Sal up in kind, then went right back to where he’d been perched with a half-smoked cigarette stuck between his lips. Sal’s head tilted as he watched Larry tweeze it to flick the ash off the end.

“Does that even do anything for you?” he asked, trying to remember when Larry had even started smoking in the first place. Some time after high school, right? Larry just looked at the stick in his fingers as he thought.

“It helps,” Larry replied vaguely. “Like, it’s just a habit. Kinda like a fidget. Nicotine doesn’t do shit though.

“Anyway, aren’t _you_ cold?” he asked Sal, looking down at the leggings that Sal was wearing, the thin, snug blue material with its star patterning looking less than adequate for hanging out on the roof. Sal just drew his knees up and shoved them up into the sweater that he was wearing. “And isn’t that my sweater?”

“Dunno what you’re talking about, Lar, this is my sweater now.” Larry could hear the smile in his voice.

Larry reached over and shoved on Sal’s knees with a quiet laugh. “Dude, you fuckin’ clothes thief, that totally is my sweater.”

Swatting Larry’s hand away, Sal scooted himself over to wedge himself against the other’s side and looked up at him with the biggest, saddest eyes possible. “You’re not gonna rob me of my most comfortable shirt, are you? It’s so cold up here. I’d die of hypothermia or something.” He paused then, and those eyes squinted a little bit. “Which isn’t even something you have to worry about anymore, so that’s even more unfair. The smoking won’t kill you either.”

“Yeah yeah, mine is a truly blessed existence,” Larry murmured around the butt of the cigarette he’d almost finished. He blew a jet of smoke then crushed out the last of it on the sole of his sneaker before flicking it off the edge of the roof. He caught sight of Sal watching him, then he realized the direction he was looking.

“So...are we gonna talk about this?” Sal started carefully, looking from the wristband and the bandage that wasn’t totally hidden beneath it anymore.

It took Larry a few seconds to respond, but he sounded sure of himself. “I’m waiting for it to start hurting again,” he admitted. “Or for it to start healing up, if it doesn’t hurt. Both things are good signs right?” His brow furrowed as he tugged the black elastic down over the strip of white. He registered pressure against the back of his shoulder, just above where the wide distended collar of his shirt rested. The mouth of Sal’s prosthetic was pressed there in a familiar gesture.

“There’s better ways to try feeling things, you know. Stuff that’s not so blood intensive. I mean, blood already stains like hell and black blood’s gotta be even worse. Think of the cleaning bill.” Sal’s arched eyebrow wasn’t lost on Larry, but he didn’t reply right away. So Sal continued, “I mean I know I’m not much but I’m totally up for helping with that, when you’re not being a gargoyle or whatever.”

Larry snorted quietly and butted his head against Sal’s. “You have a giant hardon for a dead guy.”

“Just the one dead guy. Who, I might add, isn’t even technically dead,” Sal argued.

“God you sound like my mom.”

Larry would never understand how Sal could manage to look smug without ever having to remove his mask.

“What, you mean everyone’s on the same page but you about your status as a living human being? Shocking, Larry-face, truly.”

“Shut up, you buttmunch.”

“It’s true though! It’s like you’re the only person that’s witnessed you doing all kinds of very frankly alive stuff and still doesn’t think that means anything. Mister ‘I only eat poptarts and smoke out of habit’.”

“Sal-”

“No, shh, you listen to me now.” Sal put his hands on Larry’s cheeks, mooshing them a little bit and looking him in the eye. “Dead dudes don’t walk in straight lines and call you a buttmunch, or kiss your face or cry or do art, right? They definitely don’t laugh at you when you make a dumb joke, and I’m _pretty_ sure an actual honest to god dead guy wouldn’t just say he loves you. Maybe you _were_ dead, but you’re not now.”

The insistence and stubbornness...well, it looked pretty good on Sal. Seeing the guy stand his ground on anything was so fucking good. Larry slumped more heavily against him, cheek pressed against the top of Sal’s head. Sal’s hand crept into his and he gave it a gentle squeeze.

“Those pants are really fucking cute, by the way,” he murmured.

Sal chuckled. “I’m glad I’m not the only one that thinks so.”

“They look especially good under my sweater.”

“You mean _my_ sweater.” That earned Sal another headbutt. “Ok, should I call it a boyfriend sweater instead?”

The way Larry slouched down and buried his face in Sal’s lap, Sal knew that that was exactly what he needed to say. There would be no more debate on sweater ownership.

Sal combed his fingers through Larry’s hair as he looked off toward that cloud drift, the edges of it gently lit by the early morning sun.

“Love you, Larry-face,” he said quietly. He felt the smile against his leg.

“Love you too, Sally-face.”

Larry climbed down from the roof before Sal did, citing an appointment with the schmucks in charge of the work program he hadn’t been able to sit through before. Sal was ready with an argument about how shitty and unnecessary it was, but he had to let Larry go. It was this or being sent back to the treatment center, Larry explained, looking like he’d bitten into an unripe persimmon. For the rest of the day Sal would be working with Todd and generally keeping occupied. At least they wouldn’t have time to worry about one another.

Sal hadn’t realized just how long he’d been out in the shed when the motion sensor at the door tripped. He looked up at the fuzzy webcam feed of their front step in time to see the door slamming shut. After exchanging a look with Todd, he headed inside. He spotted Larry as soon as he’d climbed up from the basement, and slowly closed the door before taking a step toward him.

Larry looked furious; he was standing in the doorway of his bedroom with his arm propped up on the frame, head bowed and shoulders tense. Sal jumped when Larry lashed out and hit the frame.

“Dude, what?”

The sound of his voice drew Larry’s attention, and immediately the poor guy looked ashamed. Sal cut it off before Larry could start trying to explain himself, his hands curling around Larry’s loosely.

“Wanna go for a walk?” he asked, the look in his eye very clearly saying this was a rhetorical question. They were going for a walk now. So Larry murmured his sure, why not and moved away to pull on a pair of sneakers that had seen better days and an old shirt, tossing aside the “nice” button-up he’d had to wear to the meeting. Sal waited until Larry had joined him again, then led the way out. Larry’s hands were shoved deep into his jeans pockets or he might have taken one.

Walking away from the direction of the sunset, Sal mused that it was nice that the weather was actually agreeable. They weren’t stuck in sweaters anymore. They could enjoy a breeze without freezing to death. The mornings were still chilly but even that would change soon enough. He poked his finger through one of the holes in Larry’s shirt, smirking a little behind his mask at the old band tee. In return, Larry jabbed him gently in the side with an elbow, eyeballing the loose black shirt that he could have sworn was also one of his old ones. Sal really was determined to steal his clothes, wasn’t he?

“Look, I can totally see your ribs,” Larry pointed out, pretty needlessly considering that it was, in fact, an old shirt that he himself had cut so low down the sides that every one of _his_ ribs had been visible. It had been a painting shirt that he’d lost track of. Now, he supposed, he knew where it had gone.

He realized when their feet hit one of the dirt elephant paths through a seldom-used playground that Sal had deliberately walked them away from town. Protecting him, maybe, or just a general bid for privacy. Either way, Larry was grateful.

They were approaching what Larry was pretty sure used to be a drive-in theater, when those were still a thing that operated in the region. The little shack that used to house the projection equipment and presumably the staff was standing derelict and lonely in the middle of the scabby-looking gravel drive. The big screen had been taken down, probably years ago. Sal was wandering on ahead of him to poke around the overgrown spaces between where posts had been set up to mark parking spaces, giving Larry a few seconds to himself to just look. Sal was still wearing those leggings that made his legs look slimmer than they really were, understating the strength of them. They looked good with the hem of his shirt hanging low around his thighs.

Sal sank back into the touch when Larry’s hands slipped over his sides and into the low armholes of his stolen shirt, cool hands linking together over Sal’s stomach. His head tilted back when Larry’s dipped forward and dry lips parted against the base of his neck. His hands came up to rest in the crooks of Larry’s elbows, gently encouraging him to stay there.

A shiver of breath accompanied the creep of fingertips down along the thin trail from Sal’s navel and into his waistband. He knew Larry was waiting for the verbal go-ahead, but the gentle lead-up always had been Sal’s favorite part of being with Larry. He didn’t want to misstep, or overstep, or push boundaries, always treating Sally with the utmost respect, even when he wasn’t the one initiating. It was disgustingly sweet and thoughtful and sometimes it was just plain frustrating. Right now though? Right now, Sal was eating up the attention.

He let out a soft sound at the sensation of parted lips and cool teeth closing on the curve of his neck. His eyes closed after a glance around to be sure that it was just them there in the gathering dusk.

“Come on, maybe not out in the open,” he murmured as one hand slid down to mold long fingers around the shape of him through his leggings. Larry just breathed a soft sound of agreement and drew away just long enough to cast around for somewhere to sneak off to. He nodded his head off toward the abandoned shack as Sal’s hand crept up the side of his neck. In seconds he’d eased Sal’s back up against the rough wall and latched his mouth back onto the other’s neck. The sound of heavy breathing gusting from behind the mask was amplified in the quiet that surrounded them and it thrilled Larry to hear it. He enjoyed being able to slide past those careful barriers that Sal maintained for himself just for a little while, and to hear him when he let himself just relax and feel without thinking, or overthinking everything. They’d jumped that hurdle more than once, with every first in their relationship.

“Hhhh fuck, Lar,” Sal breathed when he felt those cool hands once more slipping into the armholes of his shirt, then down his back to pull him tight against Larry’s body.

“Still super hot when you say my name like that,” Larry murmured against Sal’s neck just under his ear before he bit in once more, sucking gently enough not to leave more than a mild red mark. He knew the rules; no obvious marks where others could see, no drawing blood, no going ahead and trying anyway in the heat of the moment. He wasn’t into potentially hurting Sal anyway.

While Sal had a vague idea of what he might like to do in this position that he’d found himself in, his expectations were blown out of the water when suddenly he found himself missing Larry’s mouth on his neck. A bleary sound of inquiry caught in his throat when he felt distinct, direct pressure at his groin. His mask blocked his lower periphery but he gathered that Larry had taken it upon himself to up the ante and settled himself down on his knees.

He was almost surprised when he felt Larry’s head ducking underneath the hem of that mutilated shirt.

“God, Larry, wh-!” He sucked in a harsh breath when that sweet pressure returned and he felt Larry’s mouth close over the shape of his half-hard shaft through his leggings. They were _outside_ , Larry was about to fucking blow him _outside_ , this was nuts and a little thrill of fear coursed through Sal, the adrenaline making him so much more aware of every little sensation. The wall behind him, the breeze through the open shirt pulled taut by Larry’s head beneath it, the hands wandering his lower body then coming away as one braced against the wall by his hip and the other wrapped around him and gave him a slow, deliberate stroke. The restriction of his leggings came away, pulled down just far enough to keep them from impeding. The touch of Larry’s lips and tongue was a little bit startling when it came thanks to the coolness of his dulled body temperature, but he found it was quickly warming up the longer he spent just mouthing and sucking and teasing until Sal was almost achingly hard in Larry’s hand. “Fuck, fucking hell, please,” Sal panted, only for his voice to lock up when the urging was rewarded.

One of Sal’s hands tangled in his own hair as he was quickly overwhelmed, the other finding its way under the shirt to lace his fingers with Larry’s much longer brown locks. He tugged gently to try and get Larry to slow down when he felt the head of his cock brush across the other’s soft palate. A mantra of half-slurred curses and Larry’s name spilled from him until he started to feel the warm bath sensation starting to build from his legs and wash up through the rest of his body, his scalp prickling as he came with a handful of his boyfriend’s hair still clutched tight between his fingers.

Sal let his head fall against his shoulder and looked down in time to see Larry spitting into the nearby shrubs and wiping his lips. He kept himself pressed against the wall just to keep his knees from unhinging and sending him into the dirt as he righted his leggings.

“Y’know,” Larry said conversationally as he stood up again and once more slid his hands into the armholes of Sal’s shirt, “I’m pretty sure I’m gonna think that’s hot even if I can’t feel shit. Totally got a boner in my brain when you started getting into it.”

He grinned when Sal shoved on his chest then dropped his head down onto Larry’s shoulder. “You’re the fucking worst, you know that?” The laugh in reply made his heart ache, in a wonderfully warm sort of way. He eased away from the shack and snagged Larry’s hand in passing; it was time to head back before the guys started to worry about them.

“One of these days, I’m gonna figure out how to make you feel stuff again,” Sal announced when they were back at the edge of the park. Larry shook his head at Sal’s stubborn insistence that they at least try. Sal was having none of the wishy-washy-maybe-eventually, even before Larry said anything. “You said there was like a brief window when you got your shot in the morning when you could process things so maybe then. I _will_ figure this out for you, Larry.”

Larry conceded with another shake of his head, then turned around as they walked to continue along backwards so that he could face Sal. He left their hands linked in between them, swinging gently with every step.

“Fine, we’ll look up how it should work. Someone has to have tried it by now, right?”

“Exactly. Someone’s gotta know how the whole nerve situation works by now, and even if they don’t, Todd will probably have some theories by now.”

“Right, because I really want him knowing about the nuances of my sex life.”

Sal slowed down and pulled Larry’s hand do bring him close again, falling back into step at his side. “Come on, Larry. Todd’s not gonna get judgy or weird about it. He wasn’t the first time we talked to him about this stuff.”

Larry just groaned. “That was before I became a lab rat though. Can’t we just...figure this out on our own? We already have the basics down. If we run into problems, _then_ we’ll ask for his input. In the meantime I’m still gonna mess around with you. I meant it when I said you’re still hot to me regardless of whether or not I can get it up.”

“So charming,” Sal snorted, though he did appreciate the sentiment at least. He’d had to fight to get to where he wasn’t self-deprecating about his appearance, and Larry was so damned sincere when he complimented anything about Sal that it was overwhelming at first. Sometimes it still was. He loved that about Larry though, the way the guy didn’t hold back what he wanted to say when he had something that he sincerely wanted to say. He may not have been very good at talking about his own feelings, but by god when he wanted you to feel loved, he could figure out exactly what to say to make it happen, and he would mean every word. So Sal had no doubt that he meant it when Larry said he found him attractive.

When the house came into view, Sal looped his arm through Larry’s like a wealthy dilettante wordlessly asking to be escorted. “Come on, Cassanova. You’re brushing your teeth and tomorrow we’re going to get a start on figuring out your capacity for sexy things.”

**Author's Note:**

> A result of my undying very soft spot for Sad Dead Boystm
> 
> I've got the framework for several more chapters worked out, and a small, growing server mostly for discussion, plotting, and general Figuring Stuff Out-type things. [Come say hello, if you like.](https://discord.gg/nEtwcet)


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